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RURAL LETTERS 



AND OTHER RECORDS OF 



THOUGHT AT LEISURE, 



WRITTEN IN THE 



INTERVALS OF MORE HURRIED LITERARY LABOR. 



N. PARKER WILLIS. 



THE VOLUME CONTAINS '* LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE, ** OPEN- 
AIR MUSLNGS IN THE CITY," ** INVALID RAMBLES IN GER- 
MANY," " LETTERS FROM WATERING-PLACES," ETC. 



*' The forcing-garden, with its snowy roof. 
Shuts off the snow-quilt, and, of timely sleep, 
Robs the sun-weary soil. In costly flowers 
The overtasked juices languish to the sun, 
And fragrantly breathe thro' the bright-dyed lips 
Till the rich bfoom seems Nature's. But, when Spring 
Leaves the worn hot-bed idle, and the winds 
Of summer with the cooling dews stray in, 
The glad soil joyfully its trick unlearns. 
And, in pale violets and daisies small, 
Breathes its mere bliss in sunshine." 



NEW-YORK: 
BAKER AND SCRIBNER, 

No. 145 Nassau Street, and 36 Park Row. 

1851. 



f; 



^a 



1&5J 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1 849, by 

BAKER AND SCRIBNEK, 

lb the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
Southern District of New- York. 

31ft from 



..:-f ^ ' 



1932 



STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

E. O. Jenkins, 114 Nassau st., N. Y. 



DEDICATORY LETTER. 



TO IMOGEN. 

My sweet daughter : 

The Letters in this volume which describe your birthplace- 
mere pulse-countings as they are, in the way of literary records — 
should be dedicated to you, if printed at all ; and I had therefore 
written your name after the title-page just ready for the press. 
A joyous laugh from you, at play with your doll in an adjoining 
room, reached my ear a moment since, however, and suggested 
to me the time that must elapse before you could read so un- 
eventful a book understandingly, and the necessity there would 
be, even then, that the circumstances under which it was written 
should be somewhat explained to you. I felt— as a man fond of 
his grounds might do, who should see his favorite tree judged of 
by a single view at noon — a wish that it might be seen, also, with 
the shadows falling earlier and later. The interest with which 
these simple letters from Glenmary may be read by you, must 
depend much upon your knowing over what ground, in my own 
mind, this brief passage of my life threw its influences. If I had 
any of that instinctive feeling, which we sometimes vaguely trust, 
that I should be here, when you are grown to womanhood, to 
say to you what I have taken my pen to writBy I should still let 



Vi TO IMOGEN. 



the dedication, of this least-labored yet favorite volume, to my 
beloved child, stand simply with her name. 

At the time of your birth, I had lived four years at Glenmary ; 
and when — pacing the walk in front of my cottage, beneath the 
stars of a night of June — I heard your first faint cry, I recog- 
nized, in my tearful thanks to God, that a drop was overflowingly 
added, to a cup of happiness already swelling to the brim. For 
enjoyment of the rural hfe I found so delightful, I had, it is true, 
made somewhat the preparation with which one sleeps in a house 
that the haunting of some nameless spirit has made untenantable 
by others — searching first, with the candle of experience, every 
apartment besides the one I intended to occupy. I had tried life 
in every shape which, if left untried, might fret imagination. I 
had studied human nature under all the changes which can be 
wrought by differences of climate, rank, culture and association. 
- My demands, for happiness, had closed in and concentrated upon 
my own heart, the farther I went and the more changes I tried. 
I came to Glenmary, absolute in my conviction that I brought 
with me, or could receive there, from God, all the material requi- 
site for my best enjoyment of existence. In my ^ve years' trial 
of this upshot of experiments in happiness, every hour wedded 
my love to it more strongly. Even the anxiety with which the 
loss of our small competency clouded the first year that the sweet 
tliread of your hfe was braided through — even that harsh trouble, 
and the disasters and broken rehances which followed close upon 
its heels, and finally drove me back to the life I had rejected, 
failed to touch, while I could cling to the hope of remaining there, 
the essential elements of my endearment to that calm paradise. 
Misfortune, that changes the looks of men, my dear Imogen, leaves 



TO IMOGEN. vii 



he stars looking as kindly down, and the trees and flowers an- 
swering the eye as unreluctantly. 

You can understand, from this, how, in the life pictured in 
these letters, lay a frame- work of nurture for yourself, the much 
pondered promises of which were the ties hardest to sunder. In 
all my observation of your sex, I had so learned the value of 
character formed under the influences of refined rural life, and 
taking its thought-pressure and guidance, meantime, from those 
minds, only, over which God has breathed the awe of parental 
responsibility. The impressible and flexible nature of woman so 
requires, for the preservation of its individuality, an isolation from 
the mixed influences and assimilating observances of a city. A 
dew-drop, given to the exhaling sun with its rounded pearl-shape 
unswayed but by breath from Heaven, and another, shaken from 
its leaf-shelter, and flung into a stream to flow on and waste, un- 
distinguishable from turbid waters, are not more difl'erent in 
purity and beauty, thas the same character may be made by 
these diff'erences of nurture. Glenmar}^, after your birth, seemed 
to me to have been fore- chosen by my good angel, as the cradle 
and nursery I should want for you. With images of my fair 
child, tossing her simny locks in unschooled grace to the wind, I 
had peopled all the wild wood -walks above the brook ; the lawns 
and fields along the river were play-grounds and rambling places 
for a blue -eyed and infantile type of an angel mother ; the trees 
seemed spreading their shadows in conscious preparation; the 
shrubs were planted to keep pace with her growth ; and my own 
onward life — so cheered and beguiled, so graced and supplied 
with sweetest company and occupation — was forecast in a far- 
welcomed future. Do you not see bow, without knowledge of 



Viii TO IMOGEN. 



these dream-peoplings, you could scarce read my portrayings, of 
that relinquished life, with a full understanding of my value 
ofit? 

This five years' oasis of country existence, gave shape and force 
to another sentiment that has always struggled within me, and, 
(fancy-pricing of my saleable commodities though it seem,) I will 
venture to mention it — for, in imagining you as reading this 
volume, by-and-by, it is a view of myself that I like to think may 
grow out of the perusal. I scarce know how to express it, how- 
ever ; for, sure as I am of conveying the feeling of every man 
who has ever parcelled his free thoughts into '^ goods and groce- 
ries,'' it is difficult to phrase without misconveyance of meaning. 
If you have ever seen a field of broom- corn — the most careless 
branching and free swaying of all the products of a summer — 
and can fancy the contrast, in its. destiny, between sweeping the 
pure air with the wind's handling, and sweeping what it more 
usefully may, when tied up for handling as brooms, you can un- 
derstand the difference I feel, between using my thoughts at my 
pleasure, as in country life, and using them for subsistence as in 
my present profession. How much, and what quality, of an 
author, I might have been from choice, the tone of these Letters, 
I mean to say, very nearly expresses. I do not intend any com- 
parative disparagement of what I have written upon compulsion. 
The hot needle through the eye of the goldfinch betters his sing- 
ing, they say. Only separate, if with this hint you can, what I 
have done as mental toil, from what I might have written had 1 
been a thought-free farmer, with books, country leisure, and lib- 
erty to pick, with the perspective bettering of second thought, 
ftonq. t)ie brain's many-mooded vagaries. 



TO IMOGEN. ix 



A man may be excused for wishing not to be misrepresented 
to his child, and I have thus tried to make certain that my 
own writings, at least, shall speak truly of me to my daughter. 
The perversions and misrepresentations which follow and bark at 
one's progress, as curs chase a rail-train through a village street, 
I have no need to guard against, for they will be outrun and 
silenced if I am gone from you when you read this — harmless, of 
course, if I am here. And now, my little unconscious target, this 
arrow of twelve years' flight must be sped from the string ; and, 
with a kiss, presently, of which you will be far from knowing the 
meaning or the devotion, I will imprint a prayer upon your fore- 
head — ^that the shaft may find the heart it is aimed at, as well 
watched over and as blest as now, whether the bow that sent it 
be still bent or broken. 

Affectionately, 

N. P. WILLIS. 

March, 1849. 



CONTENTS. 



LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 



LETTER I. 

Brook-hollow of Glenmary — Place to write — Rural companions — Owa- 
ga creek — Farmer's life — Oxen remembered. - - - 17-24 

LETTER II. 

Assessor's visit — Bridge furniture — Rustic's soliloquy— Where are we 
alone ? — Simile of Talleyrand — The beauties of country life — 
Amende honorable — The oriole — Dog-wood tree — Society of trees — 
Drawback of city life. - - 25-32 

LETTER III. 

Education neglected — Available knowledge — Tenantry of trees — Start 
for fishing — ^Compulsion of talk — Influences of Nature. - - 33-40 

LETTER IV. 

Attar-merchant of Constantinople—Bartlett, the scenist — Mental tra- 
vel — Moneyless millennium — Intellectual age — Trout fishing — 
Baiting with a worm — The first trout — Similarity of country to city 
life. 41-50 

LETTER V. 

Hay-making — Meadow scenery — Sprague, the poet— Poets and finan- 
ciers — What is genius ? — Lord Durham and D'Israeli — Upholstery of 
sunsets. - - - = 61-59 



Xli CONTENTS. 



LETTER YI. 



Invitation to the country — Avon Springs — Narrows of the Susquehan- 
nah — Mr. Capability Brown — Taste as a profession — Inn on the Sus- 
quehannah — Wealth unclaimed — An heiress. - - - - 60-61 

LETTER VII. 

Early reviewing — Hotel life — Scenery of the Chemung — Homes of 
of genius. , , . - 68-17 

LETTER YIII. 
A chance call — Listeners wanted— Adopted by a cur. - - '?8-84 

LETTER IX. 

Estimate of criticism — Newness of impressions — Glrowing gracefully 
old. 85-91 

LETTER X. 

Harvesting — Good phrases — The Omega — Grrove plantiog — The lin- 
den-tree — Forest sculpture. .-.---. 92-98 

LETTER XI. 

Old man's Utopia — Newspaper fugitives — Sounds of Nature and 
cities — Bird music — Modified benevolence. - - - - 99-106 

LETTER XII. 

Seclusion, in a prospect — Steam-posting — Travelling cottage — Route 
of the Susquehannah to the Springs — Love of sunshine — Wade's 
Poems — Epithalamium. 106-113 

LETTER XIIT. 

Visit from an artist — Log-burning- Campbell and Wyoming — Justice 
to authors — Dawes as a poet — American estimate of English au- 
thors — Walter Savage Landor — Error uncorrected. - - 114-128 

LETTER XIV. 

Country fashionableness — Lumbering Raftsmen of the Susquehan- 
nah — Of the Delaware — Autumnal changes. - - - - 124-180 



CONTENTS. xiii 



LETTER XV. 



Steamboating on the Susquehannah — Sites for villas — Raft running — 
Search for lodgings — Chance bedfellow — Wyoming. - - 131-189 

LETTER XVI. 

Magazine writers — Advantage of criticism — Literary fairness — Uni- 
versality of English literature — American rehearsal of fame — Social 
relation to England. 140-146 

LETTER XVII. 

Autumn scenery — City visitation — Wane of dandies — Criticisms of 
manners — Cemeteries. --.---. 147-154 

LETTER XVIII. 

Streams run faster at night — Shopping in the country — Portraits 
from a barn — Riddance of nuisance — Weather, as to dignity. - 155-162 

LETTER XIX. 

Dickens — International copyright — The "Boz ball" — Mrs. Dickens — 
Speed of travel — Metropolitan hotels — Greenough's statue of Wash- 
ington — Chapman's painting — House of Representatives— Philadel- 
phia. - - - - - - - - - - - 163-174 

LETTER XX. 

Landscape gardening— Selection of farms — Value of neighbors — Econ- 
omy of seclusion — Dress in the country — Grounds and shrubbery — 
Cheap walks — Cottage insoucieuse — True country freedom. - 175-187 

LETTER XXI. 

Market for poetry — Farming and authorship — City residence — Subsist- 
ence of authors — Uses of faults — Young poets, - - . 188-197 



THE FOUR RIVERS. 
The Hudson— The Mohawk— The Chenango— The Susquehannah. 1 98-206 



xiv CONTENTS. 



LETTER 

TO THE UNKNOWN PURCHASER AND NEXT OCCUPANT OF GLENMARY. 

Beauties of Glenmary — Spare the trees — The venerable toad— Favorite 
squirrels — Spare the birds. 207-212 



GLENMARY POEMS. 

Thoughts while making the grave of a new-boun child. - - 215 

The Mother to her Child. - 218 

A Thought over a Cradle. - ----- 220 

The Involuntary Prayer of Happii^ess. 222 



OFEN-AIR MUSINGS IN THE CITY. 

Daguerreotype of Broadway — Spring in the city — A day of idling — The 
Battery, as a promenade — The wharves on Sunday — Sabbath 
walk — Confined life — "Want of horses — Substitute for a private 
yacht — Omnibus luxury — Deferrings of sorrow — Grief's recurren- 
ces — Evanescent impressions. 225-252 



INVALID RAMBLES IN GERMANY, 
IN THE SUMMER OF 1845. 

Leipsic cemetery - Funeral customs — German friendship — Hearing 
with the eye — Deaf and dumb tutor — German inattention to health — 
Leipsic conservatory — Musical composition — Music, in education — 
Concentration of coughing — Private boxes in churcli — Goethe's drink- 
ing-cellar — Napoleon's tent — Battle field of Leipsic — Poniatow- 
ski — The Fair of Leipsic — Apple market — Theatrical and show- 
booths — Wadded clothing — Pipe celebrity — Garter poetry — Re- 
source of smoking — Jewish costumes — Disguise of beards — Good 
middle-aged caps — Hungarian peddlers— German students — Mere 



CONTENTS. . XV 



keepers-warm — Visit to Dresden — Women harnessed in carts — 
Royal palace — Manufacture of porcelain — Museum of china — His- 
torical museum — Mnemonics for history — Madonna del Sisto — 
Museum of beauty— Strauss's concert — Tieck's house — German 
substitutes for tea and coffee — Fair at Dresden — Supplementary 
coat-tails— Terrace of Bruhl— -Berlin. 253-^805 



LETTERS FROM WATERING-PLACES. 

LETTER I. 

Sharon Springs — Hotel — Sulphur bathing — Indians and their em- 
ployments. ... - 309-313 

LETTER II. 

Posthumous revenges — Visit to Cooperstown— Cherry Yalley — Deriva- 
tion of its name — Otsego Lake — Source of the Susquehannah — Fen- 
imore Cooper — ^His residence — Drive along the lake. - - 314-323 

LETTER III. 

Lake Ut-say-an-tha — The Kobleskill — Novel style of architecture — 
Kobleskill graves. 324-328 

LETTER IV. 
Sharon convalescence — Indian belle — Society at Sharon. - - 329-338 

LETTER V. 

Trenton Falls — Day at Albany — Anecdote of Morse — Valley of the 
Mohawk. 334-336 

LETTER VI. 

Drive to Trenton Falls — Seclusion of the place — American propensity 
for white paint — Landlord's taste — Company at Trenton — Female 
invasion — Witty inscription. 38'7-"344 



CONTENTS. 



LETTER VII. 

Geological age of Trenton Falls — Fossils and foreigners — Description 
of the Falls. - - - 845-349 

LETTER VIII. 

Costume heightens perspective — Military tableau vivant — Fashion 
of hats for the Falls — The Falls by moonlight — Poetical simili- 
tude — Baron de Trobriand. 350-357 



A PLAIN MAN'S LOVE; 
A Story without incident, written in the leisure of illness. 859-380 



LETTERS 

FROM UNDER A BRIDGE 



LETTER I. 



My dear Doctor: Twice in the year, they say, the farmer 
may sleep late in the morning — between hoeing and haying, and 
between harvest and thrashing. If I have not written to you 
since the frost was out of the ground, my apology lies distributed 
over the "spring- work," in due proportions among ploughing, 
harrowing, sowing, plastering, and hoeing. We have finished 
the last — some thanks to the crows, who saved us the labor of 
one acre of corn, by eating it in the blade. Think what times we 
live in, when even the crows are obliged to anticipate their in- 
come ! 

When I had made up my mind to write to you, I cast about 
for a cool place in the shade — for, besides the changes which 
farming works upon my epidermis, I find some in the inner man, 
one of which is a vegetable necessity for living out-of-doors. 
Between %.yq in the morning and " flower-shut,'' I feel as if four 
walls and a ceiling would stop my breath. Very much to the 
disgust of William, (who begins to think it was infra dig. to 



18 LETTER I. 



have followed such a hob-nail from London,) I showed the first 
symptom of this chair-and-carpet asthma, by ordering my break- 
fast under a balsam-fir. Dinner and tea soon followed ; and 
now, if I go in- doors by daylight, it is a sort of fireman's visit — 
in and out with a long breath. I have worn quite a dial on the 
grass, w^orking my chair around with the sun. 

'^ If ever you observed,'* (a phrase with which a neighbor of 
mine ludicrously prefaces every possible remark,) a single tree 
will do very well to sit, or dine, or be buried under, but you can 
not write in the shade of it. Beside the sun-flecks and the light 
all around you, there is a want of that privacy, which is neces- 
sary to a perfect abandonment to pen and ink. I discovered 
this on getting as far as ''dear Doctor," and, pocketing my tools, 
strolled away up the glen to borrow '' stool and desk " of Nature. 
Half-open, like a broad-leafed book^ (green margin and silver 
type,) the brook-hollow of Glenmary spreads wide as it drops 
upon the meadow, but above, like a book that deserves its fair 
margent, it deepens as you proceed. Not far from the road, its 
little rivulet steals forth from a shadowy ravine, narrow as you 
ent^r, then widening back to a mimic cataract ; and here, a child 
would say, is fairy parlor. A small platform (an island when 
the stream is swollen) lies at the foot of the fall, carpeted with 
the fine silky grass which thrives with shade and spray. The 
two walls of the ravine are mossy, and trickling with springs ; 
the trees overhead interlace, to keep out the sun ; and down 
comes the brook, over a flight of precipitous steps, like children 
bursting out of school, and, after a laugh at its own tumble, it 
falls again into a decorous ripple, and trips murmuring away 
The light is green, the leaves of the overhanging trees look trans* 



THE BROOK HOLLOW 19 



lucent above, and the wild blue grape, with its emerald rings, 
has wove all over it a basket- lattice so fine, that you would think 
it were done to order — warranted to keep out the hawk, and let 
in the humming-bird. With a yellow pine at my back, a moss 
cushion beneath, and a ledge of flat stone at my elbow, you will 
allow T had a secretary's outfit. I spread my paper, and mended 
my pen ; and then (you will pardon me, dear Doctor) I forgot 
you altogether ! The truth is, these fanciful garnishings spoil 
work. Silvio Pellico had a better place to write in. If it had 
been a room with a Chinese paper, (a bird standing forever on 
one leg, and a tree ruffled by the summer wind, and fixed with 
its leaves on edge, as if petrified with the varlet's impudence,) 
the eye might get accustomed to it. But first came a gold-robin, 
twittering out his surprise to find strange company in his parlor, 
yet never frighted from his^twig by pen and ink. By the time I 
had sucked a lesson out of that, a squirrel tripped in without 
knocking, and sat nibbling at a last-year's nut, as if nobody but 
he took thought for the morrow. Then came an enterprising 
ant, climbing my knee like a discoverer ; and I wondered Avhether 
Fernando Cortes would have mounted so boldly, had the peak 
of Darien been as new- dropped between the Americas, as my 
leg by his ant-hill. By this time, a small dripping from a moss- 
fringe at my elbow betrayed the lip of a spring ; and, dislodging 
a stone, I uncovered a brace of lizards lying snug in the ooze. 
We flatter ourselves, thought I, that we drink first of the spring. 
We do not know, always, whose lips were before us. 

Much as you see of insect Hfe, and hear of bird-music, as you 
walk abroad, you should lie perdu in a nook, to know how much 
is frighted from sight, and hushed from singing, by your approach. 



20 LETTER I. 



What worms creep out when they think you gone, and what 
chatterers go on with their story ! So among friends, thought I, 
as I fished for the moral. We should be wiser, if we knew what 
our coming hides and silences, but should we walk so undis- 
turbed on our way ? 

You will see with half a glance, dear Doctor, that here was 
too much company for writing. I screwed up my inkstand once 
more, and kept up the bed of the stream till it enters the forest, 
remembering a still place by a pool. The tall pines hold up the 
roof high as an umbrella of Brobdignag, and neither water brawls, 
nor small birds sing, in the gloom of it. Here, thought I, as far 
as they go, the circumstances are congenial. But, as Jean Paul 
says, there is a period of life when the real gains ground upon 
the ideal ; and to be honest, dear Doctor, I sat leaning on the 
shingle across my knees, counting my sky-kissing pines, and 
reckoning what they would bring in saw-logs — so much stand- 
ing — so much drawn to the mill. Then there would be wear and 
tear of bob-sled, teamster's wages, and your dead-pull springs, 
the horses' knees. I had nearly settled the per and contra, when 
my eye lit once more on " my dear Doctor," staring from the un- 
filled sheet, like the ghost of a murdered resolution. '' Since 
when," I asked, looking myself sternly in the face ; '' is it so diffi- 
cult to be virtuous ? Shall I not write when I have a mind ? 
Shall I reckon pelf, whether I will or no ? Shall butterfly ima- 
gination thrust iron-heart to the wall ? No !" 

I took a straight cut through my ruta-baga patch and cornfield, 
bent on finding some locahty (out of doors it must be) with the 
average attractions of a sentry-box, or a church-pew. I reached 
the high-road, making insensibly for a brush dam, where I should 



PLACE TO WRITE. 21 



sit upon a log, with my face abutted upon a wall of chopped 
saplings. I have not mentioned my dog, who had followed me 
cheerfully thus far, putting up now and then a partridge, to keep 
his nose in ; but, on coming to the bridge over the brook, he 
made up his mind. '' My master," he said, (or looked,) '' will 
neither follow the game, nor sit in the cool. Chacun a son gout. 
I'm tired of this bobbing about for nothing in a hot sun." So, 
dousing his tail, (which, '^ if you ever observed," a dog hoists, as 
a flag-ship does her pennant, only when the commodore is aboard,) 
he sprung the railing, and spread himself for a snooze under the 
bridge. '^ Ben trovato /" said I, as I seated myself by his side. 
He wagged his tail half round to acknowledge the compliment, 
and I took to work like a hay-maker. 

I have taken some pains to describe these difficulties to you, 
dear Doctor, partly because I hold it to be fair, in this give-and- 
take world, that a man should know what it costs his fellow to 
fulfil obligations, but more especially, to apprise you of the 
metempsychose that is taking place in myself. You will have 
divined, ere this, that, in my out-of-doors life, I am approaching 
a degree nearer to Arcadian perfectibility, and that if I but 
manage to get a bark on and live by sap, (spare your wit, sir !) I 
shall be rid of much that is troublesome, not to say expensive, in 
the matters of drink and integument. What most surprises me in 
the past, is, that I ever should have confined my free soul and 
body, in the very many narrow places and usages I have known 
in towns. I can only assimilate myself to a squirrel, brought up 
in a school-boy's pocket, and let out some June morning on a 
snake fence. 

The spring has been damp for corn, but I had planted on a 



22 LETTER I. 



warm hillside, and have done better than my neighbors. The 
Owaga* creek, which makes a bend round my meadow before it 
drops into the Susquehannah — (a swift, bright river the Owaga, 
with as much water as the Arno at Florence) — overflowed my 
cabbages and onions, in the May freshet ; but that touches neither 
me nor my horse. The winter wheat looks like '' velvet of three- 
pile," and everything is out of the ground, including, in my case, 
the buckwheat, which is not yet put in. This is to be an old- 
fashioned hot summer, and I shall sow late. The peas are pod- 
ded. Did it ever strike you, by the way, that the pious ^neas, 
famous through all ages for carrying old Anchises a mile, should, 
after all, yield glory to a hean. Perhaps you never observed, 
that this filial esculent grows up with his father on his back. 

In my " new light," a farmer's life seems to me what a manu- 
facturer's might resemble, if his factory were an indigenous plant 
—machinery, girls, and all. What spindles and fingers it would 
take to make an orchard, if Nature found nothing but the raw 
seed, and rain-water and sunshine were brought as far as a cotton 
bale ! Your despised cabbage would be a prime article — if you 
had to weave it. Pumpkins, if they ripened with a hair-spring 
and patent lever, would be, " by'r lady," a curious invention. 
Yet these, which Aladdin nature produces if we but ^' rub the 
^amp," are more necessary to life than clothes or watches. In' 
planting a tree, (I write it reverently,) it seems to me working 
immediately with the divine faculty. Here are two hundred 
forest trees set out with my own hand. Yefc how little is my 
part in the glorious creatures they become ! 

* Corrupted now to Owego. Ochwaga was the Indian word, and means 
swift water. 



OXEN REMEMBERED. 23 



This reminds me of a liberty I have lately taken with Nature, 
which I ventured upon with proper diffidence, though the dame, 
as will happen with dames, proved less coy than was predicted. 
The brook at my feet, from its birth in the hills till it dropped 
into the meadow's lap, tripped down, like a mountain-maid with 
a song, bright and unsullied. So it flowed by my door. At the 
foot of the bank its song and sparkle ceased suddenly, and, turn- 
ing under the hill, its waters disappeared among sedge and 
rushes. It was more a pity, because you looked across the 
meadow to the stately Owaga, and saw that its unfulfilled destiny 
was to have poured its brightness into his. The author of Ernest 
Maltravers has set the fashion of charity to such fallings away. I 
made a new channel over the meadow, gravelled its bed, and 
grassed its banks, and (last and best charity of all) protected its 
recovered course with overshadowy trees. Not quite with so gay a 
sparkle, but with a placid and tranquil beauty, the lost stream 
glides over the meadow, and, Maltravers-like, the Owaga \akes 
her lovingly to his bosom. The sedge and rushes are turned into 
a garden, and, if you drop a flower into the brook at my door, it 
scarce loses a breath of its perfume before it is flung on the 
Owaga, and the Susquehannah robs him of it but with his life. 

I have scribbled away the hours till near noon, and it is time 
to see that the oxen get their Dotatoes. Faith ! it's a cool place 
under a bridge. Knock out the two ends of the Astor House, 
and turn the Hudson through the long passage, and you will get 
an idea of it. The breeze draws through here deftly, the stone 
wall is cool to my back, and this floor of running water, besides 
what the air steals from it, sounds and looks refreshingly. My 
letter has run on, till I am inclined to think the industry of running 



24 LETTER I. 



water " breeds i' the brain/' Like the tin pot at the cur's tail, 
it seems to overtake one with an admonition, if he but slack to 
breathe. Be not alarmed, dear Doctor, for, sans potatoes, my 
oxen will loll in the furrow, and though the brook run till dooms- 
day, I must stop here. 



LETTEE II. 

Mr DEAR Doctor: I have just had a visit from the assessor. 
As if a man should be taxed for a house, who could be luxurious 
under a bridge ! I have felt a decided " call'' to disclaim roof 
and threshold, and write myself down a vagabond. Fancy the 
variety of abodes open, rent-free, to a bridge-fancier ! It is said 
among the settlers, that where a stranger finds a tree blown over, 
(the roots forming, always, an upright and well-matted wall,) he 
has only his house to finish. Cellar and chimney-back are ready 
done to his hand. But, besides being roofed, walled, and water- 
ed, and better situated, and more plenty than over-blown trees 
— bridges are on no man's land. You are no '' squatter," though 
you sit upon your hams. You may shut up one end with pine 
boughs, and you have a room a-la-mode — one large v\^indow open 
to the floor. The view is of banks and running water — exquisite 
of necessity. For the summer months I could imagine this 
bridge-gipsying delicious. What furniture might pack in a 
donkey-cart, would set forth a better apartment than is averaged 
in "houses of entertainment," (so yclept,) and the saving to 
your soul (of sins committed, sitting at a bell-rope, ringing in 
vain for water) would be worthy a conscientious man's attention. 

VOL. I. 2 



0(5 LETTER II. 



I will not deny that the bridge of Glenmaiy is a favorable 
specimen. As its abutments touch my cottage-lawn, I was under 
the necessity of presenting the public with a new bridge, for 
which act of munificence I have not yet received '' the freedom 
of the town.'' Perhaps I am expected to walk through it when 
I please, without asking. The hitherward railing coming into the 
line of my fence, I have, in a measure, a private entrance ; and 
the whole structure is overshadowed by a luxuriant tree. To be 
sure, the beggar may go down the bank in the road, and, enter- 
ing by the other side, sit under it as well as I — -but he is welcome. 
I like society sans-gme — where you may come in or go out with- 
out apology, or whistle, or take off your shoes. And I would 
give notice here to the beggary of Tioga, that, in building a stone 
seat under the bridge, and laying the banks with green-sward, I 
intend no sequestration of their privileges. I was pleased that a 
swallow, who had laid her mud-nest against a sleeper overhead, 
took no offence at my improvements. Her three nestlings made 
large eyes when I read out what I have scribbled, but she drowses 
on without astonishment. She is a swallow of last summer, and 
has seen authors. 

A foot-passenger has just gone over the bridge, and, little 
dreaming there were four of us listening, (the swallows and I,) 
he leaned over the raihng, and ventured upon a soliloquy. '' Why 
don't he cut down the trees so's he can see out ?" said my uncon- 
scious adviser. I caught the eye of the mother-swallow, and 
fancied she was amused. Her swallowlings looked petrified at 
the sacrilegious suggestion. By the way, it is worthy of remark, 
that though her little ones have been hatched a week, this 
estimable parent still nts upcm their heqds. Might not this con" 



WHERE ARE WE ALONE. 21 



tinned incubation be tried with success upon backward children ? 
We are so apt to think babies are finished when their bodies are 
brought into the world ! - 

For some minutes, now, I have observed an occasional cloud 
rising from the bottom of the brook, and, peering among the 
stones, I discovered one of the small lobsters with which the 
jeams abound. (The naturalists may class them differently, 
but as there is but one, and he has all the armament of a lobster, 
though on the scale of a shrimp, the swallows agree with me in 
opinion that he should rank as a lobster.) So we are five. 
'^ Cocksnouns !" to borrow Scott's ejaculation, people should 
never be too sure that they are unobserved. When 1 first came 
under the bridge, I thought myself alone. 

This lobster puts me in mind of Talleyrand. You w '. say 
he is going backward, yet he gets on faster that ^vay than the 
other. After all, he is a great man who can turn his reverses to 
account, and that I take to be, oftentimes, one of the chief secrets 
of greatness. If I were in politics, I would take the lobster for 
my crest. It would be ominous, I fear, in poetry. 

You should come to the country now, if you would see the 
glory of the world. The trees hav been coquetting at their 
toilet, waiting for warmer weather ; but now I think they have 
put on their last flounce and furbelow, spread their '' bustle" and 
stand to be admired. They say '' leafy J^uneT To-day is the 
first of July, and though I give the trees my first morning regard 
(out of doors) when my eyes are clearest, I have not fairly 
thought, till to-day, that the foliage was full. If it were not for 
lovers and authors, who keep vigil and count the hours, I should 
suspect there was foul play between sun and moon — a legitimate 



28 LETTER 11. 



day made away with now and then. (The crime is not unknown 
in the upper circles. Saturn devoured his children.) 

There is a gloiy in potatoes — well hoed. Corn — the swaying 
and stately maize — has a visible glory. To see the glory of 
turnips, you must own the crop, and have cattle to fat — but they 
have a glory. Pease need no paean — they are appreciated. So 
are not cabbages, which, though beautiful as a Pompeian wine- 
cup, and honored above roses by the lingering of the dew, are 
yet despised of all handicrafts — save one. Apt emblem of ancient 
maidenhood, which is despised, like cabbages, yet cherishes 
unsunned in its bosom the very dew we mourn so inconsistently 
when rifled from the rose. 

Apropos — the delicate tribute in the last sentence shall serve 
for an expiation. In a journey I made through Switzerland, I 
had, for chance-travelling companions, three Scotch ladies, of the 
class emulated by this chaste vegetable. They were intelligent, 
refined, and lady-like ; yet, in some Pencillings by tlie Way, 
(sketched, perhaps, upon an indigestion of mountain cheese, or 
an acidity of bad wine — such things affect us,) I was perverse 
enough to jot down a remark, more invidious than just. We are 
reached with a long whip for our transgressions, and, but yester- 
day, I received a letter from the Isle of Man, of which thus 
runs an extract : *' In your description of a dangerous pass in 
Switzerland, you mention travelling in the same public convey- 
ance with three Scotch spinsters, and declare you would have 
been alarmed, had there been any neck in the carriage you cared 
for, and assert, that neither of your companions would have 
hesitated to leap from a precipice, had there been a lover at the 
bottom. Did either of us tell you so, sir? Or what ground 



THE ORIOLE. 29 



have you for this assertion ? You could not have judged of us 
by your own beautiful countrywomen, for they are proverbial 
for delicacy of feeling. You had not yet made the acquaintance 
of mine. We, therefore, must appropriate entirely to ourselves 
the very flattering idea of having inspired such an opinion. Yet 
allow me to assure you, sir, that lovers are by no means so scarce 
in my native country, as you seem to imagine. 'No Scotchwoman 
need go either to Switzerland, or Yankee-land, in search of them. 
Permit me to say then, sir, that as the attack was so public, an 
equally public amende honorable is due to us." 

I make it here. I retract the opinion altogether. I do not 
think you '' would have leaped from the precipice, had there 

been a lover at the bottom." On the contrary, dear Miss , 

I think you would have waited till he climbed up. The amende , 
I flatter myself, could scarce be more complete. Yet I Avill make 
it stronger if you wish. 

As I look out from under the bridge, I see an oriole sit- 
ting upon a dog-wood tree of my planting. His song drew my 
eye from the paper. I find it difficult, now, not to take to my- 
self the whole glory of tree, song, and plumage. By an easy de- 
lusion, I fancy he would not have come but for the beauty of the 
tree, and that his song says as much in bird-recitative. I go 
back to one rainy day of April, when, hunting for maple saplings, 
I stopped under that graceful tree, in a sort of island jungle, and 
wondered what grew so fair that was so unfamiliar, yet with a 
bark like the plumage of the pencilled pheasant. The limbs 
grew curiously. A iance-like stem, and, at regular distances, a 
cluster of radiating branches, like a long cane thrust through in- 
verted parasols. I set to work with spade and pick, took it 



30 LETTER II. 



home on my s'.ioulder, and set it out by Glenmary brook ; and 
tliere it stands to-day, in the full glory of its leaves, having just 
shed the white blossoms with which it kept holyday in June. 
ISTow the tree would have leafed and flowered, and the bird, in 
black and gold, might perchance have swung and sung on the 
slender branch, which is still tilting with his effort in the last ca- 
denza. But the fair picture it makes to my eye, and the delicious 
music in my ear, seem to me no less of my own making and 
awaking. Is it the same tree, flowering unseen in the woods, or 
transplanted into a circle of human love and care, making a part 
of woman's home, and thought of and admired whenever she 
comes out from her cottage, with a blessing on the perfume and 
verdure ? Is it the same bird, wasting his song in the thicket, or 
singing to me, with my whole mind afloat on his music, and my 
eyes fastened to his glittering breast ? So it is the same block 
of marble, unmoved in the caves of Pentelicus, or brought forth 
and wrought under the sculptor's chisel. Yet the sculptor is 
allowed to create. Sing on, my bright oriole ! Spread to the 
light and breeze your desiring finger, my flowering tree ! Like 
the player upon the organ, I take your glory to myself ; though, 
like the hallelujah that burns under his fingers, your beauty and 
music worship God. 

There are men in the world whose misfortune it is to think too 
little of themselves — rari nantes in gurgite vasto. I would recom- 
mend to such to plant trees, and live among them. This suggest- 
ing to nature — working, as a master-mind, with all the fine 
mysteries of root and sap obedient to the call — is very king-like. 
Then how elevating is the society of trees ! The objection I have 
to a city, is the necessity, at every other step, of passing some 



DRAWBACK OF CITY LIFE. 



acquaintance or other, witli all his merits or dements entirely 
through my mind — some man, perhaps, whose existence and vo- 
cation I have not suggested— (as I might have done were he a 
tree) — whom I neither love, nor care to meet ; and yet he is 
thrust upon my eye, and must be noticed. But to notice him 
with propriety, I must remember what he is — what claims he has 
to my respect, my civility. I must, in a minute, balance the ac- 
count between my character and his, and, if he speak tv. me, 
remember his wife and children, his last ilhiess, his mishap or 
fortune in trade, or whatever else it is necessary to mention in 
condolence or felicitation. A man with but a moderate acquaint- 
ance, living in a city, will pass through his mind each day, at a 
fair calculation, say two hundred men and women, with their be- 
longings. What tax on the memory! What fatigue (and all 
profitless) to them and him ! " Sweep me out hke a foul thor- 
oughfare !" say I. ''The town has trudged through me !" 

I like my mind to be a green lane, private to the dwellers in 
my own demesne. I like to be bowed to as the trees bow, and 
have no need to bow back or smile. If I am sad, my trees fore- 
go my notice without offence. If I am merry, or whimsical, they 
do not suspect my good sense, or my sanity. We have a con- 
stant itching (all men have, I think) to measure ourselves by 
those about us. I would rather it should be a tree than a fop, or 
a politician, or a 'prentice. We grow to the nearest standard. 
We become Lilliputians in Lilliput. Let me grow up Jike a tree. 

But here comes Tom Groom with an axe, as if he had looked 
over my shoulder, and started, apropos of trees. 

"Is it that big button-ball you'll have cut down, sir?" 

" Call it a sycamore, Tom, ard I'll come and see." It is a fine 



32 LETTER 11. 



old trunk, but it shuts out the village spire and must come 
down. 

Adieu, dear Doctor ; you may call !.his a lette^' if you will, but 
it is more like an essay. 



• 



LETTER III. 

Dear Doctor: There are some things that grow more certain 
with time and experience. Among them, I am happier for find- 
ing out, is the affinity which makes us friends. But there are 
other matters which, for me, observation and knowledge only- 
serve to per|)lex, and among these is to know whose *' education 
has been neo^Iected.'' One of the first new lio^hts which broke on 
me, was after my first day in France. I went to bed with a new- 
born contempt, mingled with resentment, in my mind, toward my 
venerable alma mater. The three most important branches of 
earthly knowledge, I said to myself, are to understand French 
when it is spoken, to speak it so as to be understood, and to read 
and write it with propriety and ease. For accomplishment in the 
last, I could refer to my diploma, where the fact was stated on 
indestructible parchment. But allowing it to speak the truth, 
(which was allowing a great deal,) there were the two preceding 
branches, in which (most culpably to my thinking) ^^ my educa- 
tion had been neglected." Could I have taken out my brains, 
and, by simmering in a pot, have decocted Yirgil, Homer, Play- 
fair, Dugald Stewart, and Copernicus, all ^yq, into one very small 
Frenchman — (what they had taught me to what he could teach)— 

I should have been content, though the fiend blew the fire. 
2^ 



34 "LETTER III. 



I remember a beggarly Greek, who acquired an ascend eney 
over eight or ten of us, gentlemen and scholars, travelling in the 
east, by a knowledge of what esculents, growing wild above the 
bones of Miltiades, were ''good for greens." We were out of 
provisions, and fain to eat with Nebuchadnezzar. '' Hang gram- 
mar !" thought I, ''here's a branch in which my education has 
been neglected." Who was ever called upon in his travels to 
conjugate a verb ? Yet here, but for this degenerate Athenian, 
we had starved for our ignorance of what is edible in plants. 

I had occasion, only yesterday, 'to make a similar remark. I 
was in a crowded church, listening to a Fourth of July oration. 
What with one sort of caloric and what with another, it was very 
uncomfortable, and a lady near me became faint. To get her out, 
was impossible, and there was neither fan, nor sal volatile, within 
twenty. pews. The bustle, after a while, drew the attention of 
an uncombed Yankee in his shirt-sleeves, who had stood in the 
aisle with his mouth open, gazing at the stage in front of the pul- 
pit, and wondering, perhaps, what particular difference between 
sacred and profane oratory required this painstaking exhibition 
of the speaker's legs. Comprehending the state of the case at a 
single glance, the backwoodsman whipped together the two ends 
of his riding-switch, pulled his cotton handkerchief tightly over it, 
and, with this effective fan, soon raised a breeze that restored 
consciousness to the lady, besides cooling everybody in the vicin- 
ity. Here is a man, thought I, brought up to have his wits 
ready for an emergency. His " education has not been neg- 
lected." 

To know nothing of sailing a ship, of farming, of carpentering, 
in short, of any trade or profession, may be a proper, though 



AVAILABLE KNOWLEDGE 35 



sometimes inconvenient ignorance. I only speak of sucli defi- 
ciencies, as a modest person will not confess without giving a 
reason— as a man who can not swim will say he is liable to the 
cramp in deep water. With some reluctance, lately, I have 
brought myself to look after such dropped threads in my own 
woof of acquisitions, in the hope of mending them before they 
were betrayed by an exigency. Trout-fishing is one of these. I 
plucked up heart a day or two since, and drove to call upon a 
young sporting friend of mine, to whom I confessed, plump, I 
never had caught a trout. I knew nothing of flies, worms, rods, 
or hooks. ThouQ^h I had seen in a book that ^^ hosr's down" was 
the material for the May-fly, I positively did not know on what 
part of that succulent quadruped the down was found. 

"Positively?" 

" Positively !" 

My friend F. gravely shut the door to secure privacy to my 
ignorance, and took from his desk a volume— of flies ! Here was 
new matter ! Why, sir ! your trout- fishing is a politician of the 
first water ! Here were baits adapted to all the whims, weak- 
nesses, states of appetite, even counter-baits'^'fco the very cunning, 
of the fish. Taking up the " Spirit of the Times " newspaper, 
his authority in all sporting matters, which he had laid down as 
I came in, he read a recipe for the construction of one out of these 
many seductive imitations, as a specimen of the labor bestowed 
on them. '' The body is dubbed with hog's down, or light bear's 
hair mixed with yellow mohair, whipped with pale floss silk, and 
a small strip of peacock's herl for the head. The wings from the 
rayed feathers of the mallard, dyed yellow ; the hackle from the 



36 LETTER III. 



bittern's neck, and the tail from the long hairs of the sable or 
ferret/' 

I cut my friend short, midway in his volume, for, ever since 
my disgust at discovering that the perplexed grammar I had 
been whipped through was nothing but the art of talking cor- 
rectly, which I could do before I began, I have had an aversion 
to rudiments. *' Frankly," said I, '' dear F. my education has 
been neglected. Will you take me with you, trout- fishing, fish 
yourself, answer my questions, and assist me to pick up the sci- 
ence in my own scrambling fashion ?" 

He was good-natured enough to consent, and now, dear Doc- 
tor, you see to what all this prologue was tending. A day's 
trout-fishing may be a very common matter to you, but the sport 
was as new to me as to the trout. I may say, however, that of 
the two, I took to the novelty of the thing more kindly. 

The morning after was breezy, and the air, without a shower, 
had become cool. I was sitting under the bridge, with my heels 
at the water's edge, reading a newspaper, while waiting for my 
breakfast, when a slight motion apprised me that the water had 
invaded my instep. I had been wishing the sun had drank less 
freely of my brook, and, within a few minutes of the wish, it had 
risen, doubtless, from the skirt of a shower in the hills beyond 
us. ** Come !" thought I, pulling my boots out of the ripple, 
" so should arrive favors that would be welcome — no herald, and 
no weary expectation. A human gift so uses up gratitude with 
the asking and delaying." The swallow heard the increased 
babble of the stream, and came out of the air like a scimetar to 
see if her little ones were afraid, and the fussy lobster bustled 



START FOR FISHING. 37 



about in his pool, as if there were more company than he expect- 
ed. '' Se7nper paratus is a good motto, Mr. Lobster!" *^ I will 
look after your little ones, Dame Swallow !" I had scarce dis- 
tributed these consolations among my family, when a horse crossed 
the bridge at a gallop, and the head of my friend F. peered pres- 
ently over the railing. 

** How is your brook ?" 

*' Rising, as you see !" 

It was evident there had been rain west of us, and the sky was 
still gray — good auspices for the fisher. In half an hour we were 
climbing the hill, with such contents in the wagon-box as my 
friend advised — the debris of a roast pig and a bottle of hock, 
supposed to be included in the bait. As we got into the woods 
above, (part of my own small domain,) I could scarce help ad- 
dressing my tall tenantry of trees. ^' Grow away, gentlemen," I 
would have said, had I been alone ; *' I rejoice in your prosper- 
ity. Help yourselves to the dew and the sunshine ! If the 
showers are not sent to your liking, thrust your roots into my 
cellar, lying just under you, and moisten your clay without cere- 
mony — the more the better." After all, trees have pleasant 
ways with them. It is something that the}?- find their own food 
and raiment — something that they require neither watching nor 
care — something that they know, without almanac, the preces- 
sion of the seasons, and supply, unprompted and unaided, the 
covering for their tender family of germs. So do not other and 
less profitable tenants. But it is more to me that they have no 
whims to be reasoned with, no prejudices to be soothed, no gar- 
rulity to reply or listen to. I have a peculiarity which this 
touches nearly. Some men '^ make a god of their belly ;" some 



38 LETTER III. 



spend thought and cherishing on their feet, faces, hair ; some 
few on their fancy or their reason. / am chary of my gift of 
speech . I hate to talk but for my pleasure. In ccmmon with my 
fellow-men, I have one faculty which distinguishes nie from the 
brute — an articulate voice. I speak (I am warranted to believe) 
like my Maker and his angels. I have, committed to me, an in- 
strument no human art has ever imitated, as incomprehensible in 
its fine and celestial mechanism as the reason which controls it. 
Shall I breathe on this articulate wonder at every fool's bidding ? 
Without reasoning upon the matter as I do now, I have felt in- 
dignant at the common adage, '^ words cost nothing !" It is a 
common saying in this part of the country, that "you may talk 
off ten dollars in the price of a horse." Those who have trav- 
elled in Italy, know well, that, in procuring anything in that 
country, from a post-carriage to a paper of pins, you pay so 
much money, so much talk — the less talk the more money. I 
commenced all my bargains with a compromise — *^ You charge 
me ten scudi, and you expett me to talk you down to five. I 
know the price and the custom. Now, I will give you seven and 
a half if you will let me off the talk." I should be glad if all 
buying and selhng were done by signs. It seems to me that 
talking on a sordid theme invades and desecrates the personal 
dignity. The *' scripta verba manenf^ has no terrors for me. I 
could write that without a thought, which I would put myself to 
great inconveniences to avoid saying. 

You, dear Doctor, among others, have often asked me how 
long I should be contented in the country. Comment, diahle! 
ask, rather, how you are contented in a town ! Does not every 
creature, whose name may have been mentioned to you — a vast 



COMPULS[ON OF x^ALK. 39 



congregation of nothinglings — stop you in the street, and, will 
you, nill you, make you perform on your celestial organ of 
speech. — nay, even choose the theme out of his own littlenesses ? 
When and how do you possess your thoughts, and their godlike 
interpreter, in dignity and peace ? You are a man, of all others, 
worthy of the unsuggestive listening of trees. Your coinage of 
thought, profuse and worthy of a gift of utterance, is alloyed and 
depreciated by the promiscous admixtures of a town. Who ever 
was struck with the majesty of the human voice in the street ? Yet, 
who ever spoke, the meanest, in the solitude of a temple, or a 
wilderness, or in the stillness of night — wherever the voice is 
alone heard — without an awe of his own utterance — a feeling as 
if he had exercised a gift, which had in it something of the 
supernatural ? 

The Indian talks to himself, or to the Great Spirit in the woods, 
but is silent among men. We take many steps toward civiliza- 
tion as we get on in hfe, but it is an error to think that the heart 
keeps up with the manners. At least, with me, the perfection of 
existence seems to be, to possess the arts of social life, with the 
simplicity and freedom of the savage. They talk of '' unbridled 
youth !" Who would not have borne a rein at twenty, he scorns 
at thirty ? Who does not, as his manhood matures, grow more 
impatient of restraint — more unwilling to submit to the conven- 
tional tyrannies of society — more ready, if there were half a 
reason for it, to break through the whole golden but enslaving 
mesh of society, and start fresh, with I^ature and the instincts of 
life, in the wilderness. The imprisonment, to a human eye, may 
be as irksome as a fetter — yet they who live in cities are never 



40 LETTER III. 



loosed. Did you ever stir out of doors without remembering that 
you were seen ? 

I have given you my thoughts as I went by my tall foresters, 
dear Doctor, for it is a part of trout-iishing, as quaint Izaak held 
it, to be stirred to musing and revery by the influences of nature. 
In this free air, too, I scorn to be tied down to '^ the proprieties." 
Nay, if it come to that, why should I finish what I begin ? Dame 
Swallow, to be sure, looks curious to hear the end of my first les- 
son with the angle. But no ! rules be hanged ! I do not live on 
a wild brook to be plagued with rhetoric. I w^ill seal up my let- 
ter where I am, and go a-field. You shall know what we brought 
home in the basket when I write again. 



LETTER IV. 

My dear Doctor : Your letters, like yourself, travel in tlie best 
of company. What should come v^ith your last, but a note from 
our friend Stetson of the Astor, forwarding a letter which a trav- 
eller had left in the bronze vase, with '' something enclosed which 
feels like a key." ^'A 'key''' quotha! Attar of jasmine, subtle 
as the breath of the prophet from Constantinople by private 
hand ! N'o less ! The small gilt bottle, with its cubical edge and 
cap of parchment, lies breathing before me. I think you were 
not so fortunate as to meet Bartlett, the draughtsman of the 
American Scenery^ — the best of artists in his way, and the pleas- 
antest of John Bulls, any way. He travelled with me a summer 
here, making his sketches, and has since been sent by the same 
enterprising publisher, (Yirtue, of Ivy Lane,) to sketch in the 
Orient. (*^ Stand by," as Jack says, for something glorious from 
that quarter.) Well — pottering about the Bezestein, he fell in 
with my old friend Mustapha, the attar-merchant, who lifted the 
silk curtains for him, and, over sherbet and spiced coffee in the 
inner divan, questioned him of America^ — a country which, to 
Mustapha's fancy, is as far beyond the moon as the moon is be- 
yond the gilt tip of the seragho. Bartlett told him the sky was 



42 LETTER IV. 



round in tliat country, and the women faint and exquisite as his 
own attar. Upon which Mustapha took his pipe from his mouth, 
and praised Allah. After stroking the smoke out of his beard, 
and rolling his idea over the whites of his eyes for a few minutes, 
the old merchant pulled, from under the silk cushion, a visiting 
card, once white, but stained to a deep orange with the fingering 
of his fat hand, unctuous from bath-hour to bath-hour with the 
precious oils he trafficks in. "When Bartlett assured him he had 
seen me in America, (it was the card I had given the old Turk at 
parting, that he might remember my name,) he settled the cur- 
tains which divide the small apartment from the shop, and, com- 
manding his huge Ethiopian to watch the door, entered into a 
description of our visit to the forbidden recesses of the slave- 
market ; of his purchase, (for me, ) of the gipsy Maimuna ; and 
some other of my six weeks' adventures in his company — for 
Mustapha and I, wherever it might lie in his fat body, had a 
nerve in unison. We mingled like two drops of the oil of roses. 
At parting, he gave Bartlett this small bottle of jasmine, to be 
forwarded to me, with much love, at his convenience ; and with 
the perfume of it in my nostrils, and the corpulent laugh of old 
Mustapha ringing in my ear, I should find it difficult, at this mo- 
ment, to say how much of me is under this bridge in Tioga, 
North America. I am not sure that my letter should not be 
dated '^ attar shop, near the seraglio," for there, it seems to me, I 



am writmg. 



" Tor-mentingest growin' time, aint it !" says a neighbor, lean- 
ing over the bridge at this instant, and little thinking that, on that 
breath of his, I travelled from the Bosphorus to the Susquehan- 
nah. Really, they talk of steamers, but there is no travelling 



MENTAL TRAVEL. 43 



conveyance like an interruption. A minute since, I was in the 
capital of the Palaeologi, smoking a narghile in the Turk's shop. 
Presto ! here I am in the county of Tiog', sitting under a bridge, 
with three swallows and a lobster, (not three lobsters at a swal- 
low — as you are very likely to read, in your own careless way,) 
and no outlay for coals or canvass. Now, why should not this 
be reduced to a science — like steam ? I'll lend the idea to the 
cause of knowledge. If a man may travel from Turkey to N'ew 
York on a passing remark, what might be done on a long ser- 
mon ? At present the agent is irregular — so was steam. The 
performance of the journey, at present, is compulsory — so was 
travelling by steam before Fulton, The discoveries in animal 
magnetism justify the most sanguine hopes on the subject, and 
*^ open up," as Mr. Bulwer would express it, a vast field of novel 
discovery. 

The truth is, (I have been sitting a minute, thinking it over,) 
the chief obstacle and inconvenience in travelling is the prejudice 
in favor of taking the body with us. It is really a preposterous 
expense. Going abroad exclusively for the benefit of the mind, 
we are at no little trouble, in the first place, to provide the means 
for the body's subsistence on the journey, (the mind not being 
subject to '^ charges;") and then, besides trailing after us, through 
ruins and galleries, a companion who takes no enjoyment in pic- 
tures or temples, and is perpetually incommoded by our enthusi- 
asm, we undergo endless vexation and annoyance with the care 
of his baggage. Blessed be Providence, the mind is independent 
of boots and linen. When the system, above hinted at, is perfect- 
ed, we can leave our box-coats at home, item pantaloons for all 
weathers, item cravats, flannels, and innumerable hose. I shall 



44 LETTER IV. 



use my portmanteau to send eggs to market, with chickens in the 
two carpet-bags. My body I shall leave with the dairy- woman, 
to be fed at mil king-time. Probably, however, in the progress 
of knowledge, there will be some discovery by which it can be 
closed in the absence of the mind, like a town-house when the 
occupant is in the country — blinds down, and a cobweb over the 
keyhole. 

In all the prophetic visions of a millennium, the chief obstacle to 
its progress is the apparently undiminishing necessity for the root 
of all evil. Intelligence is diffusing, law becoming less merciless, 
ladies driving hoops, and (I have observed) a visible increase of 
marriages between elderly ladies and very young gentlemen — the 
last a proof that the affections (as will be imiversally true in the 
millennium) may retain their freshness in age. But, among all 
these lesser beginnings, the philanthropist has hitherto despaired, 
for, to his most curious search, there appeared no symptom of 
beginning to live without money. May we not discern in this 
system, (by which the mind, it is evident, may perform some of 
the most expensive functions of the body, ) a dream of a moneyless 
millennium — a first step towards that blessed era when ^' Biddle 
and discounts" will be read of like "• Aaron and burnt- offerings" 
— ceremonies which once made it necessary for a high-priest, 
and an altar at which the innocent suffered for the guilty, but 
which shall have passed away in the blessed progress of the 
millennium ? 

If I may make a grave remark to you, dear Doctor, I think 
the whole bent and spirit of the age we live in, is, to make light 
of matter. Religion, which used to be seated in tlie heart, is, 
by the new light of C banning, addresed purely to the intellect. 



INTELLECTUAL AGE. 45 



The feelings and passions, which are bodily affections, have less 
to do with it than the mind. To eat with science and drink 
hard, were once passports to society. To 'think shrewdly and 
talk well, carry it now. Headaches were cured by pills, which 
now yield to magnetic fluid — nothing so subtle. If we travelled 
once, it must be by pulling of solid muscle. Rarefied air does it 
now, better than horses. War has yielded to negotiation. A 
strong: man is no better than a weak one. Electro-mag-netism 
will soon do all the work of the world, and men's muscles Avill 
be so much weight — no more. The amount of it is, that we are 

m 

gradually learning to do without our bodies. The next great dis- 
covery will probably be some pleasant contrivance for getting 
out of them, as the butterfly sheds his worm. Then, indeed, 
having no pockets, and no '^ corpus'^ for your '^ habeas^'' we can 
dispense with money and its consequences, and lo ! the mil- 
lennium ! Having no stomachs to care for, there will be much 
cause of sin done away, for, in most penal iniquities, the stomach 
is at the bottom. Think what smoothness will follow in '^ the 
course of true love" — money coming never between ! It looks ill 
for your profession, dear Doctor. We shall have no need of 
physic. The fee will go to him who " ministers to the mind 
diseased" — probably the clergy. {Mem, to put your children 
in the church.) I am afraid crowded parties will go out of fash- 
ion — ^it would be so difficult to separate one's globule in case of 
" mixed society" — yet the extrication of gases might be improved 
upon. Fancy a lady and gentleman made *' common air" of, by 
the mixture of their '^ oxygen and hydrogen !" 

What most pleases me in the prospect of this Swedenborg 
order of things, is the probable improvement in the laws. In 



46 LETTER IV. 



the physical age passing away, we have legislated for the protec- 
tion of the body, but no pains or penalties for wounds upon its 
more sensitive inhabitant — murder to break the snail's shelly but 
innocent pastime to thrust a pin into the snail. In the new 
order of things, we shall have penal laws for the protection of the 
sensibihties — whether they be touched through the fancy, the 
judgment, or the personal dignfty. Those will be days for poets ! 
Critics will be hanged — or worse. A sneer will be manslaughter. 
Ridicule will be a deadly weapon, only justifiable when used in 
defence of life. For scandal, imprisonment from ten to ^ forty 
years, at the mercy of the court. All attacks upon honor, honesty, 
or innocence, capital crimes. That the London Quarterly ever 
existed, will be classed with such historical enormities as the 
Inquisition, and torture for witchcraft ; and '' to be LochhoMed'^ 
will mean, then, what *' to be Burked'^ means now. 

You will say, dear Doctor, that I am the '^ ancient mariner" 
of letter-writers — telling my tale out of all apropos-ity. But, 
after some consideration, I have made up my mind, that a man 
who is at all addicted to revery, must have one or two escape- 
valves — a journal or a very random correspondence. For reasons 
many and good, I prefer the latter ; and the best of those reasons 
is my good fortune in possessing a friend like yourself, who is 
above '' proprieties," (prosodically speaking,) and so you have 
become to me, what Asia was to Prometheus — 

" When his being overflowed, 
Was like a golden chalice to bright wine, 
Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust," 

Talking of trout. We emerged from the woods of Glenmary, 



BAITING WITH A WORM. 41 



(you left me there in my last letter,) and rounding the top of the 
hill, which serves for my sunset drop-curtain, we ran down a mile 
to a brook in the bed of a low valley. It rejoices in no name, 
that I could hear of ; but, like much that is uncelebrated, it has 
its virtues. Leaving William to tie the horse to a hemlock, and 
bring on the basket, we started up the stream ; and, coming to a 
cold spring, my friend sat down to initiate me into the rudiments 
of preparing the fly. A very gay-coated gentleman was selected, 
rather handsomer than your horse-fly, and whipped upon a rod 
quite too taper for a comparison. 

'^What next?" 

" Take a bit of worm out of the tin box, and cover the barb 
of the hook !" 

" I will. Stay ! where are the hits ? I see nothing here but 
full-length worms, crawling about, with every one his complement 
of extremities — not a tail astray.'' 

-Bah! pull a bit off!" 

'* What ! you don't mean that I am to pull one of these squirm- 
ing unfortunates in two ?" 

'' Certainly !" 

'* Well, come ! that seems to me rather a liberty. I grant you 
'my education has been neglected,' but, my dear F., there is 
mercy in a guillotine. I had made up my mind to the death of 
the fish, but this preliminary horror !" — 

'' Come ! don't be a woman !" 

''I wish I were — I should have a pair of scissors. Fancy 
having your leg pulled off*, my good fellow. I say it is due to 
the poor devil that the operation be as short as possible. Sup- 
pose your thumb slip ?" 



48 LETTER IV. 



" Why, tlie worm feels nothing ! Pain is in the imagination. 
Stay ! I'll do it for you — there ?" 

What the remainder of the worm felt, I had no opportunity 
of observing, as my friend thrust the tin box into his pocket 
immediately ; but the '' bit" which he dropped into the palm ol 
my hand, gave every symptom of extreme astonishment, to say 
the least. The passing of the barb of the hook three times 
through him, seemed rather to increase his vitality, and looked 
to me as little like happiness as anything I ever saw on an excur- 
sion of pleasure. Far be it from me, to pretend to more sensi- 
bility than Christopher IN'orth, or Izaak Walton. The latter had 
his humanities ; and Wilson, of all the men I have ever seen, 
carries, most marked in his fine face, the philter which bewitches 
affection. But, emulous as I am of their fame as anglers, and 
modest as I should feel at introducing innovations upon an art so 
refined, I must venture upon some less primitive instrument than 
thumb and finger, for the dismemberment of worms. I must 
take scissors. 

I had never seen a trout caught, in my hfe, and I do not re- 
member at this moment ever having, myself, caught a fish, of any 
genus or gender. My first lesson, of course, was to see the thing 
done. F. stole up to the bank of the stream, as if his tread 
might wake a naiad, and threw his fly into a circling, black pool, 
sparkling with brilliant bubbles, which coiled away from a small 
brook-leap in the shade. The same instant the rod bent, and a 
glittering spotted creature rose into the air, swung to his hand, 
and was dropped into the basket. Another fling, and a small 
trail of the fly on the water, and another followed. With the 
third, I felt a curious uneasiness in mj elbow, extending quickly 



THE FIRST TROUT. 49 



to my wrist — the tingling of a new-born enthusiasm. F. had taken 
up the stream, and, with his hps apart, and body bent over, like 
a mortal surprising some troop of fays at revel, it was not reason- 
able to expect him to remember his pupil. So, silently I turned 
doiun, and at the first pool threw in my fly. Something bright 
seemed born at the instant under it, and the slight tilting pull 
upon the pole took me so much by surprise,' that, for a second, I 
forgot to raise it. Up came the bright trout, raining the silver 
water from his back, and, at the second swing through the air, 
(for I had not yet learned the sleight of the fisher to bring him 
quick to hand,) he dropped into the pool, and was gone. I had 
already begun to take his part against myself, and detected a 
pleased thrill, at his escape, venturing through my bosom. I sat 
down upon a prostrate pine, to new- Shy lock my poor worm. 
The tin box was in F.'s pocket ! Come ! here was a relief. As 
to the wild -wood worms that might be dug from the pine-tassels 
under my feet, I was incapable of violating their forest sanctuary, 
I would fish no more. I had had my pleasure. It is not like pulling 
up a stick or a stone, to pull up a resisting trout. It is a peculiar 
sensation, unimaginable till felt. I should like to be an angfer 
very well, hut for the worm in my pocJcet, 

The brook at my feet, and, around me, pines of the tallest lift, 
by thousands ! You may travel through a forest, and look upon 
these communicants with the sky, as trees. But you cannot sit 
still in a forest, alone and silent, without feeling the awe of their 
presence. Yet the brook ran and sang as merrily, in their black 
shadow, as in the open sunshine ; and the woodpecker played his 
sharp hammer on a tree evergreen for centuries, as fearlessly as 
on a shivering poplar, that will be outlived by such- a fish-catcher 

VOL. I. 3 



50 LETTER IV. 



as I. Truly, this is a world in which there is small recognition 
of greatness. As it is in the forest, so it is in the town. The 
very gods would have their toes trod upon, if they walked with- 
out their wings. Yet let ns take honor to ourselves above vege- 
tables. The pine beneath me has been a giant, with his top in 
the clouds, but lies xfow unvalued on the earth. We recognize 
greatness when it is dead. We are prodigal of love and honor 
when it is unavailing We are, in something, above wood and 
stubble. 

I have fallen into a sad trick, dear Doctor, of preaching ser- 
mons to myself, from these texts of . nature. Sometimes, like 
other preachers, I pervert the meaning and forget the context, 
but revery would lose its charm if it went by reason. Adieu ! 
Come up to Glenmary, and catch trout if you will. But I will 
have your worms decently drowned before boxed for use. I can- 
not sleep o' nights after slipping one of these harmless creatures 
out of his own mouth, in a vain attempt to pull him asunder. 



LETTER V. 

My dear Doctor : If this egg hatch without getting cold, or, to 
accommodate my language to your city apprehension, if the letter 
I here begin comes to a finishing, it will be malgre blistering 
hands and weary back — the consequences of hard raking — of hay. 
The men are taking their four o'clock of cheese and cider in the 
meadow, and, not having simplified my digestion as rapidly as my 
habits, I have retired to the shelter of the bridge, to be decently 
rid of the master's first bit and pull at the pitcher. After em- 
ploying my brains in vain, to discover why this particular branch 
of farming should require cider and cheese, (eaten together at no 
other season that I can learn,) I have pulled out my scribble- 
book from the niche in the sleeper overhead, and find, by luck, 
one sheet of tabula rasa, upon which you are likely to pay eigh- 
teen pence to Amos Kendall. 

Were you ever in a hay-field. Doctor ? I ask for information. 
Metaphorically, I know you '^ live in clover" — meaning the so- 
ciety of wits, and hock of a certain vintage — but seriously, did 
you ever happen to stand on the natural soil of the earth, off the 
pavement ? If you have not, let me tell you it is a very pleas- 
ant change. I have always fancied there was a mixture of tjie 



52 LETTER V. 



vegetable in myself; and I am convinced, now, that tliere is some- 
thing in us which grows more thriftily on fresh earth, than on 
flag-stones. There are some men indigenous to brick and mor- 
tar, as there are plants which thrive best with a stone on them ; 
but there are '' connecting links" between all the varieties of God's 
works, and such men verge on the mineral kingdom. I have seen 
whole geodes of them, with all the properties of flints, for exam- 
ple. But in you, my dear Doctor, without flattery, I think I see 
the -vegetable, strong, though latent. You would thrive in the 
country, well planted and a little pruned. I am not sure it would 
do to watei' you freely— but you want sunshine and fresh air, and 
a little bird to shake the " dew" out of your top. 

I see, from my seat under the bridge, a fair meadow, laid like 
an unrolled carpet of emerald along the windings of a most bright 
and swift river. The first owner of it, after the savage, all honor 
to his memory, sprinkled it with forest trees, now at their loftiest 
growth, here and there one, stately in the smooth grass, like a 
polished monarch on the foot- cloth of his throne. The river is 
the Owaga, and its opposite bank is darkened with thick wood, 
through which a liberal neighbor has allowed me to cut an eye- 
path to the village spire — a mile across the fields. From my 
cottage door, across this meadow-lawn, steals, with silver foot, the 
brook I redeemed from its lost strayings, and, all along between 
brook and river, stand haycocks, not fairies. Now, possess me as 
well of your whereabout — what you see from your window in 
Broadway ! Is there a sapling on my whole farm that would 
change root-hold with you ? 

The hay is heavy this year, and if there were less, I should 
still feel like taking my hat off* tc the meadow. There is nothing 



SPRAGUE, THE POET. 53 



like living in the city, to impress one with the gratuitous hberahty 
of the services rendered one in the country. Here are meadows 
now, that, without hint or petition, pressing or encouragement, 
pay or consideration, nay, careless even of gratitude, shoot me up 
some billions of grass-blades, clover-flow^ers, white and red, and 
here and there a nodding regiment of lilies, tall as my chin ; and 
it is understood, I believe, that I am welcome to it all. ISTow, 
you may think this is all easy enough, and the meadow is happy 
to be relieved ; but so the beggar might think of your alms, and 
be as just. But you have made the money you give him by the 
sweat of your brow. So has the meadow its grass. '' It is esti- 
mated," says the Book of l^ature, " that an acre of grass-land 
transpires, in twenty-four hours, not less than six thousand four 
hundred quarts of water." Sweat me that without a fee, thou 
dollar a visit ! 

Here comes William from the post, with a handful of papers. 
The Mirror, with a likeness of Sprague. A likeness in a mirror 
could scarce fail, one would think, and here, accordingly he 
is — the banker-poet, the Rogers of our country — fit as " him- 
self to be his parallel." Yet I have never seen that stern 
look on him. We know he bears the '' globe"'^' on his back, 
like old Atlas, but he is more urbane than the w^orld-bearer. He 
keeps a muscle unstrained for a smile. A more courteous gen- 
tleman stands not by Mammon's altar — no, nor by the lip of Heli- 
con — yet this is somewhat stern. In what character, if you 
please, Mr. Harding ? Sat Plutus, or Apollo, astride your optic 
nerve w^hen you drew that picture ? It may be a look he has, 

* Mr. Sprague is cashier of the Globe Bank, in Boston. 



LETTER V 



but, fine head as it stands on paper, they who form from it an 
idea of the man, would be agreeably disappointed in meeting him. 
And this, which is a merit in most pictures, is a fault in one which 
posterity is to look at. 

Sprague has the reputation of being a most able financier. Yet 
he is not a rich man — best evidence in the world that he puts 
his genius into his calculations, for it is the nature of uncommon 
gifts to do good to all but their possessor. That he is a poet, 
and a true and high one, has been not so much acknowledged by 
criticism, as/eZ^ in the republic. The great army of editors, who 
paragraph upon one name, as an entry of college-boys will play 
upon one flute, till the neighborhood would rather listen to a 
voluntary on shovel and tongs, have not made his name diurnal 
and hebdomadal ; but his poetry is diffused by more unjostled 
avenues, to the understandings and hearts of his countrymen. I, 
for one, think he is a better banker for his genius, as with the 
same power he would have made a better soldier, statesman, far- 
mer, what you will. I have seen excellent poetry from the hand 
of Plutus — (Biddle, I should have said, but I never scratch out, 
to you) — yet he has but ruffled the muse, while Sprague has 
courted her. Our Theodore,"^ hien-aime, at the court of Berlin, 
writes a better dispatch, I warrant you, than a fellow born of 
red tape and fed on sealing-wax at the department. I am afraid 
the genius of poor John Quincy Adams is more limited. He is 
only the best president we have had since Washington — not a 
poet, though he has a volume in press. Briareus is not the 
father of all who will have a niche. Shelley would have made 

* Theodore Fay, secretary of the American embassy to Prussia. 



WHAT IS GENIUS ? 55 



an unsafe banker, for he was prodigal of stuff. Pope, Rogers, 
Crabbe, Sprague, Halleck, waste no gold, even in poetry. Every 
idea gets his due of those poets, and no more ; and Pope and 
Crabbe, by the same token, would have made as good bankers as 
Sprague and Rogers. We are under some mistake about genius, 
my dear Doctor. I'll just step in-doors, and find a definition of 
it in the library. 

Really, the sun is hot enough, as Sancho says, to fry the brains 
in a man's skull. 

'' Genius," says the best philosophical book I know of, " whep* 
ever it is found, and to whatever purpose directed, is mental 
power. It distinguishes the man of fine phrensy^ as Shakspeare 
expresses it, from the man of mere pJirensy, It is a sort of in- 
stantaneous insight, that gives us knowledge without going to 
school for it. Sometimes it is directed to one subject, sometimes 
to another ; but under whatever form it exhibits itself, it enables 
the individual who possesses it, to make a wonderful, and almost 
miraculous progress in the line of his pursuit." 

Si non e vero, e hen trovato. If philosophy were more popular, 
we should have Irving for president, Halleck for governor of 
Iowa, and Bryant envoy to Texas. But genius, to the multitude, 
is a phantom without mouth, pockets, or hands — incapable of 
work, unaccustomed to food, ignorant of the uses of coin, and unfit 
candidate, consequently, for any manner of loaves and fishes. A 
few more Spragues would leaven this lump of narrow prejudice, 

I wish you would kill off your patients, dear Doctor, and con- 
trive to be with us at the agricultural show. I flatter myself I 
shall take the prize for turnips. By . the way, to answer your 
question while I think of it, that is the reason why I am not at 



56 LETTER V. 



Niagara, *^ taking a look at the viceroy." I must watch my ttir- 
niphng. I met Lord Dm^ham once or twice when in London, 
and once at dinner at Lady Blessington's. I was excessively in- 
terested, on that occasion, by the tactics of D 'Israeli, who had 
just then chipped his pohtical shell, and was anxious to make an 
impression on Lord Durham, whose glory, still to come, was con- 
fidently foretold in that bright circle. I rather fancy the dinner 
was made to give Vivian Grey the chance ; for her ladyship, be- 
nevolent to every one, has helped D'Israeli to ''imp his wing," 
with a devoted friendship, of which he should imbody, in his ma- 
turest work, the delicacy and fervor. Women are glorious friends 
to stead ambition ; but effective as they all can be, few have the 
tact, and fewer the varied means, of the lady in question. The 
guests dropped in, announced but unseen, in the dim twilight ; 
and, when Lord Durham came, I could only see that he was of 
middle stature, and of a naturally cold address. Bulwer spoke 
to him, but he was introduced to no one — a departure from the 
custom of that maison sans- g me, which was either a tribute to his 
lordship's reserve, or a ruse on the part of Lady Blessington, to 
secure to D'Israeh the advantage of having his acquaintance 
sought — successful, if so; for Lord Durham, after dinner, re- 
quested a formal introduction to him. But for D'Orsay, who 
sparkles, as he does everything else, out of rule, and in splendid 
defiance of others' dullness, the soup and the first half hour of 
dinner would have passed off, wdth the usual English fashion of 
earnest silence. I looked over my spoon at the future premier — a 
dark, saturnine man, with very black hair, combed very smooth-- 
and wondered how a heart, with the turbulent am.bitions, and 
disciplined energies which were stirring, I knew, in his, could be 



LORD DURHAM AND DISRAELI. 57 



concealed under that polished and marble tranquillity of mien 
and manner. He spoke to Lady Blessington in an under-tone, 
replying with a placid serenity that never reached a smile, to so 
much of D'Orsay's champagne wit as threw its sparkle in his 
way, and Bulwer and D 'Israeli were silent altogether. I should 
have foreboded a dull dinner if, in the open brow, the clear sunny 
eye, and unembarrassed repose of the beautiful and expressive 
mouth of Lady Blessington, I had not read the promise of a change. 
It came presently. With a tact, of which the subtle ease and 
grace can in no way be conveyed into description, she gathered 
up the cobweb threads of conversation going on at different parts 
of the table, and by the most apparent accident, flung them into 
D 'Israeli's fingers, like the ribands of a four-in-hand. And, if so 
coarse a figure can illustrate it, he took the whip -hand like a 
master. It was an appeal to his opinion on a subject he v/ell 
understood, and he burst at once, without preface, into that fiery 
vein of eloquence which, hearing many times after, and alvv^ays 
with new delight, have stamped D 'Israeli on my mind as the 
most wonderful talker I have ever had the fortune to meet. He 
is anything but a decl aimer. You would never think him on 
stilts. If he catches himself in a rhetorical sentence, he mocks at 
it in the next breath. He is satirical, contemptuous, pathetic, 
humorous, everything in a moment ; and his conversation on any 
subject whatever, embraces the omnibus rebus, et quibusdam aliis. 
Add to this, that D 'Israeli's is the most intellectual face in Eng- 
land — pale, regular, and overshadowed with the most luxuriant 
masses of raven-black hair ; and you will scarce wonder that, 
meeting him for the first time, Lord Durham was, (as he was ex- 
pected to be by the Aspasia of that London Academe, ) impressed. 
3* 



58 LETTER V. 



He was not carried away as we were. That would have been 
unhke Lord Durham. He gave his whole mind to the brilUant 
meteor blazing before him ; but the telescope of judgment was in 
his hand — to withdraw at pleasure. He has evidently, native to 
his blood, that great quality of a statesman — retenu. D 'Israeli 
and he formed at the moment a finely contrasted picture. Un- 
derstanding his game perfectly, the author deferred, constantly 
and adroitly, to the opinion of his noble listener, shaped his argu- 
ment by his suggestions, allowed him to say nothing without 
using it as the nucleus of some new turn to his eloquence ; and all 
this, with an apparent effort against it, as if he had desired to ad- 
dress himself exclusively to Lady Blessington, but was compelled, 
by a superior intellectual magnetism, to turn aside and pay hom- 
age to her guest. With all this instinctive management there was 
a flashing abandon in his language and choice of illustration, a 
kindling of his eye, and, what I have before described, a positive 
foaming at his lips, which, contrasted with the warm but clear 
and penetrating eye of Lord Durham, his calm yet earnest fea- 
tures, and lips closed without compression, formed, as I said, a 
picture, and of an order worth remembering in poetry. Without 
meaning any disrespect to D 'Israeli, whom I admire as much as 
any man in England, I remarked to my neighbor, a celebrated 
artist, that it would make a glorious drawing of Satan tempting 
an archangel to rebel. 

Well — D 'Israeli is in Parliament, and Lord Durham on the 
last round but one of the ladder of subject greatness. The vice- 
roy will be premier, no doubt; but it is questionable if the 
author of Vivian Grey does more than carry out the moral of his 
own tale. Talking at a brilliant table, with an indulgent and 



UPHOLSTERY OF SUNSETS. 59 



superb woman on the watch for wit and eloquence, and rising in 
the face of a cold, common-sense House of Commons, on the look- 
out for froth and humbug, are two different matters. In a great 
crisis, with the nation in a tempest, D 'Israeli would flash across 
the darkness very finely — but he will never do for the calm right- 
hand of a premier. I wish him, I am sure, every success in the 
world; but I trust that whatever poHtical reverses fall to his 
share, they will drive him back to literature. 

I have written this last sentence in the red light of sunset, and 
I must be out to see my trees watered, and my kine driven 
a-field after their milking. What a coverlet of glory the day- 
god draws about him for his repose ! I should like curtains of 
that burnt crimson. If I have a passion in the world, it is for 
that royal trade, upholstery ; and so thought George the Fourth, 
and so thinks Sultan Mahmoud, who, with his own henna-tipped 
fingers, assisted by his assembled harem, arranges every fold of 
drapery in the seraglio. If poetry fail. 111 try the profession 
some day en grand^ and meantime let me go out and study one 
of the three hundred and sixty-five varieties of couch-drapery 
in the west. 



LETTER VI. 

My dear Doctor : Your letter contained 

" a few of the unpleasantest words 
That e'er were writ on paper !" 

Why should you not pass August at Glenmary ? Have your 

patients bought you, body and soul ? Is there no " night-bell " 

in the city but yours ? Have you no practice in the country, my 

dear Esculapius ? Faith ! I'll be ill ! By the time you reach 

here, I shall be a " case," I have not had a headache now in 

twenty years, and my constitution requires a change. I'll begin 

by eating the cucumbers we had saved for your visit, and you 

know the consequences. Mix me a pill for the cholera — first, 

second, or third stage of the disease, according to your speed — 

and come with what haste you may. If you arrive too late, you 

lose your fee, but I'll return your visit, by the honor of a ghost. 

By the way, as a matter of information, do you charge in such 

cases ? Or, the man being dead, do you deduct for not feeling 

his pulse, nor telling him the name of his damaged organ in 

Latin ? It should be half-price, I think — these items off. Let 

me know by express mail, as one likes to be prepared. 



NARROWS OF THE SUSQUEHANNAH. 61 



Since I wrote to you, X hsive added the Chemung river to my 
list of acquaintances. It was done a Vimprovista, as most pleas- 
ant things are. We were driving to the village on some early 
errand, and met a friend at the cross-roads, bound with an inva- 
lid to Avon Springs. He was driving his own horses, and pro- 
posed to us to set him a day's journey on his way. I had hay 
to cut, but the day was made for truants — bright, breezy, and 
exhilarating ; and, as I looked over my shoulder, the only diffi- 
culty vanished, for there stood a pedlar chaffering for a horn- 
comb with a girl at a well. We provided for a night's toilet 
from his tin-box, and, easing off the check-reins a couple of holes, 
to enlighten my ponies as to the change in their day's work, we 
struck into the traveller's trot, and sped away into the eye of a 
southwest breeze, happy as urchins when the schoolmaster is on 
a jury. 

When you come here, I shall drive you to the Narrows of the 
Susquehannah. That is a word, nota bene, which, in this degree 
of latitude, refers not at all to the breadth of the stream. It is a 
place where the mountain, like many a frowning coward, threat- 
ens to crowd its gentler neighbor, but gives room at its calm 
approach, and annoys nobody, but the passer-by. The road be- 
tween them, as you come on, looks etched with a thumb-nail 
along the base of the cliff, and you would think it a pokerish 
drive, making no allowance for perspective. The friable rock, 
however, makes rather a smooth single track ; and if you have the 
inside when you meet Farmer Giles or the stage-coach, you have 
only to set your hub against the rock, and '^ let them go by as 
likes." The majestic and tranquil river sweeps into the peaked 
shadow, and on again, with the disdain of a beauty used to con- 



62 LETTER VI. 



quer. It reminded me of Lady Blessington's "do if you dare!'* 
when the mob at the House of Lords threatened to break her 
chariot windows. There was a calm courage in Miladi's French 
glove that carried her through, and so, amid this mob of moun- 
tains, glides the Susquehannah to the sea. 

While I am here, let me jot down an observation worthy the 
notice of Mr. Capability Brown. This cliff falls into a line of 
hills running from northwest to southeast, and, by ^ve in the sum- 
mer afternoon, their tall shoulders have nudged the sun, and the 
long, level road at their bases lies in deep shadow, for miles along 
the Owaga and Susquehannah. " Consequence is," as my friend 
of the '' Albany Daily," says, we can steal a march upon twilight, 
and take a cool drive before tea. What the ruination shops on 
the west side of Broadway are, to you, this spur of the AUegha- 
nies is, to me, (minus the plate-glass, and the temptations.) I 
value this — for the afternoons in July and August are hot and 
long ; the breeze dies away, the flies get in- doors, and, with the 
desire for motion, yet no ability to stir, one longs for a ride with 
Ariel through ''the veins o' the earth." Mr. C. Brown, now, 
would mark me down, for this privilege of road well shaded, some 
twenty pound in the rent. He is a man in England who trades 
upon his taste. He goes to your country-seat to tell you what 
can be done with it — what are its unimproved advantages, what 
to do with your wood, and what with your water. He would 
rate this shady mountain as an eligibility in the site, to be reck- 
oned, of course, as income. A very pleasant man is Mr. Brown ! 

It occurs to me. Doctor, that a new branch of this gentleman's 
profession might be profitable. Why not set up a shop to tell 
people what they can make of themselves ? I have a great mind 



TASTE, AS A PROFESSION. 63 



to take out a patent for the idea. The stock in trade would be 
two chairs and a green curtain — (for taste, hke rouge, should be 
sold privately) — not expensive. I would advertise to see gentle- 
men in the morning, ladies in the evening, *' secrecy in all cases 
strictly observed." Few people of either sex know their own style. 
Your Madonna is apt to romp, for instance, and your romp to wear 
her hair plain and a rosary. Few ladies know what colors they 
look best in — whether smiles or tears are most becoming, whether 
they appear to most advantage sitting, like Queen Victoria and 
Tom Moore, (and this involves a delicate question,) or, standing 
and walking. The world is full of people who mistake their 
style — fish for your net, every one. How many women are never 
charming till they forget themselves ! A belle is a woman who 
knows her weapons — -colors, smiles, moods, caprices ; who has 
looked at her face in the glass, like an artist, and knows what will 
lighten a defect or enhance a beauty. The art is as rare as the 
belle. ** Pourquoi ? my dear knight. '^ Because taste is, where 
knowledge was before the discovery of printing — locked up with 
the first possessor. Why should it not be diffused ? What a 
refuge for reduced gentility would be such a vocation ! What 
is now the disease of fortunes would be then their remedy; 
parents would cultivate a taste for eloquence in their children, 
because there is no knowing what they may come to — the rea- 
son, now, why they take pains to repress it. 

I presume it is in consequence of the diffusion of printing that 
ignorance of the law is no apology for crime. Were taste within 
reach of all, (there might be dispensaries for the poor,) that 
*' shocking bad hat" of yours, my dear Doctor, would be a crim- 
inal offence. Our fat friend with the long-tailed coat, and the 



64 LETTER VI. 



waist at his slioulder-bladee, would be liable to fine for misin- 
forming the tailor as to the situation of his hips — the tailor of 
course not to blame, having nothing to go by. Two scandalous 
old maids together would be abated as a nuisance — as it is the 
quantity of tin pots, which, in a concert upon that tintinnabulary 
instrument, constitutes a disturbance of the peace. The reform 
would be endless. I am not sure it could be extended to bad 
taste in literature, for, like rebellion, the crime would merge in 
the universality of the offenders. But it would be the general 
putting down of tame monsters, now loose on society. Pensez y ! 
What should you think of dining, with a woman behind your 
chair worth seven hundred thousand pounds sterling — well in- 
vested ? You may well stare — but unless a large number of 
sensible people are very much mistaken, you may do so, any day, 
for some three shillings, at a small inn on the Susquehannah. 
Those who know the road, leave behind them a showy, porticoed 
tavern, new, and carefully divested of all trees and grass, and 
pull up at the door of the old inn at the place — a low, old- 
fashioned house, built on a brook-side, and with all the ap- 
pearance of a comfortable farm-house, save only a leaning and 
antiquated sign-post. Here lives a farmer well off in the world, 
a good-natured old man, who for some years has not meant to 
keep open tavern ; but from the trouble of taking down his sign- 
post, or the habit, and acquaintance with travellers, gives all 
who come what chance fare may be under the roof, and at the 
old prices common in days when the bill was not ridden by 
leagues of white paint and portico. His dame, the heiress, is a 
tall and erect woman of fifty, {'' or, by'r lady, threescore,'') a 
smiling, intelligent, ready hostess, with the natural manners of 



WEALTH UNCLAIMED. Q^ 



a gentlewoman. Now and then, a pale daughter , unmarried, and 
twentj-four or younger, looks into the white-washed parlor, and, 
if the farmer is home from the field, he sits down with his hat 
on, and lends you a chat with a voice sound and hearty as the 
smell of hay. It is altogether a pleasant place to loiter away 
the noon ; and though it was early for dinner when we arrived, 
we put up our horses, (the men were all a-field,) and Dame 
Raymond spread her white cloth, and set on her cherry-pie, 
while her daughter broiled for us the de quoi of the larder, in the 
shape of a salt mackerel. The key of the "bin'' was in her 
pocket, and we were young enough, the dame said, as she gave 
it to us, to feed our ovm horses. This good woman, or this great 
lady, is the only daughter, as I understand it, of an old farmer, 
ninety years of age, who has fallen heir to an immense fortune 
in England. He was traced out, several years ago, by the execu- 
tors, and the proper testimonials of the property placed in his 
hands ; but he was old, and his child was well off and happy, 
and he refused to put himself to any trouble about it. Dame 
Raymond, herself, thought England a great way off; and 
the pride of her life is her fine chickens ; and to go so far upon 
the strength of a few letters, leaving the farm and hen-roost to 
take care of themselves, was an undertaking which, she felt, 
justified Farmer Raymond in shaking his head. Lately, an en- 
terprising gentleman in the neighborhood has taken the papers, 
and she consented to write to her father, who willingly made 
over to her all authority in the matter. The claim, I under- 
stand, is as well authenticated as paper evidence can make it, and 
the probability is, that, in a few months. Dame Raymond, will be 
more troubled with her riches than she ever was with her chickens. 



66 LETTER VJ. 



We dined at our leisure, and had plenty of sharp gossip with 
the tall hostess, who stood to serve the tea from a side-table, 
and, between our cups, kept the flies from her tempting cherry- 
pie and brown sugar, with a large fan. I have not often seen 
a more shrewd and sensible woman, and she laughs and phi- 
losophizes about her large fortune in a way that satisfied me 
she would laugh just as cheerily if it should turn out a bubble. 
She said her husband had told her *' it was best not to be proud, 
till she got her money." The only symptom that I detected, of 
castle-building, was a hint she let slip of hoping to entertain 
travellers, some day, in a better house. I coupled this with an- 
other remark, and suspected that the new tavern, with its big 
portico and blazing sign, had not taken the wind out of her sails 
w^ithout offence, and that, perhaps, the only use of her money, " 
on which she had determined, was to build a bigger, and eclipse 
the intruder. 

I amused myself with watching her as she bustled about with 
old-fashioned anxiety to anticipate our wants, and fancying the 
changes to which the acquisition of this immense fortune might 
introduce her in England. There was her daughter, whom a 
little millinery would improve into a very presentable heiress, 
cooking our mackerel ; while Mrs. Thwaites, the grocer's widow 
in London, with no more money probably, was beset by half 
the unmarried noblemen in England — Lord Lyndhurst, it is said, 
the most pressing. But speculation is endless, and you shall go 
down with your trout line, dear Doctor, and spin your own cob- 
webs while Dame Raymond cooks your fish. 

I have spun out my letter to such a length, that I have left 
myself no room to prate to you of the beauties of the Chemung; 



AN HEIRESS. 67 



but you are likely to hear enougli of it, for it is a subject with 
which I am, just now, something enamored^ I think you share 
with me my passion for rivers. If you have the grace to come 
and visit us, and I survive the cholera you have brought upon 
me, we will visit this new Naiad in company, and take Dame 
Raymond in our way. Adieu. 



LETTER VII. 

I AM of opinion, dear Doctor, that a letter, to be read under- 
standingly, should have marginal references to the state of the 
thermometer, the condition of the writer's digestion, and the 
quality of his pen and ink, at the time of writing. These mat- 
ters, if they do not affect a man's belief in a future state, very 
sensibly operate upon his style of composition ; sometimes (so 
with me at least) upon his sentiments and minor morals. 

Like most other pen-and-inklings in this be-printed country, I 
commenced authorship at precisely the wrong end — criticism. 
Never having put my hat upon more than one or two grown-up 
thoughts, I still felt myself qualified to pronounce upon any man's 
literary stature, from Walter Scott to whom you please — God 
forgive me ! I remember (under this delusion of Sathan) sitting 
down to review a book by one of the most sensible women in 
this country. It was a pleasant morning — favorable symptom 
for the author. I wrote the name of the book at the head of a 
clean sheet of Bath post, and the nib of my pen capered nimbly 
away into a flourish, in a fashion to coax praise out of a pump- 
kin. What but courtesy on so bright a morning and with so 
smooth a pen? I was in the middle of the page, taking breath 



EARLY REVIEWING. , 69 



after a Wg and laudatory sentence, wlien, puff! through the 
window y^ame a gust of air, labelled for the bare nerves. (If you 
have ever been in Boston, jDerhaps you have observed that an 
east wind, i*i that city of blue noses in June, gives you a sensa- 
tion like beiwg suddenly deprived of your skin.) In a shudder of 
disgust I bore down upon the dot of an i, and my pen, like an 
" over-tried frLnd," gave way under the pressure. With the 
wind in that s^uie quarter, dexterity died. After vain efforts 
to mend my pen to its original daintiness, I amputated the nib 
to a broad working stump, and aimed it doggedly at the be- 
ginning of a new paragraph. But my wits had gone about with 
the grasshopper on the church-steeple. Nothing would trickle 
from that stumpy quill, either graceful or gracious ; and, having 
looked through the book but with a view to find matter to praise, 
I was obliged to run it over anew to forage for the east wind. 
" Hence the milk in the cocoa-nut," as the showman says of 
the monkey's stealing children. I wrote a savage review, which, 
the reader was expected to believe, contained the opinions of 
the reviewer ! ! Oh, Jupiter ! 

All this is to apologize, not for my own letter, which I intend 
to be a pattern of good humor, but for a passage in your last, 
(if written upon a hard egg you should have mentioned it in 
the margin,) in which, apropos of my jaunt to the Chemung, 
you accuse me of being glad to get away from my hermitage. 
I could write you a sermon, now, on the nature of content, but 
you would say the very text is apocryphal. My '' lastly," how- 
ever, would go to prove that there is bigotry in retirement, as 
in all things either good or pleasurable. The eye, that never 
grows familiar with nature, needs freshening from all things else. 



VO LETTER Vir. 



A room, a cliair, a musical instrument, a horse, a dog, the road 
you drive daily, and the well you drink from, are all more prized 
when left and returned to. The habit of turning back daily from 
a certain milestone, in your drive, makes that milestone, after a 
while, a prison wall. It is pleasant to pass it, though the road 
beyond be less beautiful. If I were once more " brave Master 
Shoe-tie, the great traveller,'^ it would irk me, I dare say, to ride 
thirty miles in a rail- car drawn by one slow horse. Yet it is a 
pleasant ''lark,'^ now, to run down to Ithaca for a night, in this 
drowsy conveyance, though I exchange a cool cottage for a fly- 
nest, '* lavendered linen" for abominable cotton, and the service 
of civil William for the '^ young lady that takes care of the 
chambers." I like the cobwebs swept out of my eyes. I like to 
know what reason I have to keep my temper among my house- 
hold gods. I like to pay an extravagant bill for villainous enter- 
tainment abroad, and come back to escape ruin in the luxuries of 
home. 

Doctor! were you ever a vagabond, for years together?. I 
know you have hung your hat on the south pole, but you are 
one of those '^ friend of the family" men, who will travel from 
Dan to Beersheba, and be at no charges for lodging. You can 
not understand, I think, the life from which I have escaped^ — the 
life of " mine ease in mine inn." Pleasant mockery ! You have 
n#ver had the hotel fever — never sickened of the copperplate 
human faces met exclusively in those homes of the homeless — 
never have gone distracted at the eternal " one piece of soap, 
and the last occupant's tooth-brush and cigar !" To be slighted, 
any hour of the evening, for a pair of shppers and a tin candle- 
stick — to sleep and wake amid the din of animal wants, complain- 



HOTEL LIFE. 71 



ing and supplied— to hear no variety of human tone but the ex- 
pression of these baser necessities — to be waited on, either by fel- 
lows who would bring your coffin as unconcernedly as your 
breakfast, or by a woman who is rude, because insulted when 
kind — to lie always in strange beds — to go home to a house of 
strangers — to be weary without pity, sick without soothing, sad 
without sympathy — to sit at twilight by your lonely window, in 
some strange city, and, with a heart which a child's voice would 
dissolve in tenderness, to see door after door open and close upon 
fathers, brothers, friends, expected and welcomed by the beloved 
and the beloving- — these are costly miseries against which I almost 
hourly weigh my cheaper happiness in a home ! Yet this is the 
life pined after by the grown-up boy — the hfe called fascinating 
and mystified in romance — the life, dear Doctor, for which even 
yourself can fancy I am ^^ imping my wing" anew ! Oh, no ! I 
have served seven years for this Rachel of contentment, and my 
heart is no Laban to put me off with a Leah. 

'* A !" Imagine this capital letter laid on its back, and point- 
ed" south by east, and you have a pretty fair diagram of the junc- 
tion of the Susquehannah and the Chemung. The note of admira- 
tion describes a superb line of mountains at the back of the Che- 
mung valley, and the quotation marks express the fine bluffs that 
overlook the meeting of the waters at Athens. The cross of the 
letter, (say a line of four miles,) defines a road from one river to 
the other, by which travellers up the Chemung save the distance 
to the point of the triangle, and the area between is a broad 
plain, just now as fine a spectacle of teeming harvest as you 
would find on the Genesee. 

As the road touches ths Chemung, you pass under the base 



12 LETTER VII. 



of a round mountain, once shaped like a sugar-loaf, but now with 
a top o' the fasLion of a schoolboy's hat punched in to drink 
from ; the floor- worn edge of the felt answering to a fortification 

around the rim of the hill, built by I should be obliged if 

you would tell me whom ! They call it Spanish Hill, and the 
fortifications were old at the time of the passing through of Sulli- 
van's army. It is as pretty a fort as my Uncle Toby could have 
seen in Flanders, and was, doubtless, occupied by gentlemen sol- 
diers long before the Mayflower moored off the rock of Plymouth. 
The tradition runs that an Indian chief once ascended it to look 
for Spanish gold ; but, on reaching the top, was enveloped in 
clouds and thunder, and returned with a solemn command from 
the spirit of the mountain that no Indian should ever set his foot 
on it again. An old lady, whohves in the neighborhood, (famous 
for killing two tories with a stone in her stocking,) declares that 
the dread of this mountain is universal among the tribes, and 
that nothinof would induce a red man to ascend it. This looks 
as if the sachem had found what he went after ; and it is a 
modern fact, I understand, that a man, hired to plough on the 
hillside, suddenly left his employer and purchased a large farm, 
by nobody knows v/hat windfall of fortune. Half this mountain 
belongs to a gentleman who is building a country-seat on an ex- 
quisite site betv/een it and the river, and, to the kindness of his 
son and daughter, who accompanied us in our ascent, we are 
indebted for a most pleasant hour, and what information I have 
given you. 

I will slip in, here, a memorandum for any invalid, town-wear}^ 
person, or new married couple, to whom you may have occasion, 
in your practice, to recommend change of air The house for- 



SCENERY OF THE CHEMUNG. 



merly occupied by this gentleman, a roomy mansion, in a com- 
manding and beautiful situation, is now open as an inn ; and I 
know nowhere a retreat so private and desirable. It is near both 
the Susquehannah and the Chemung, the hills laced with trout- 
streams, four miles from Athens, and half way between Owego 
and Elmira. The scenery all about is delicious, and the house 
well kept, at country charges. My cottage is some sixteen miles 
off; and if you give any of your patients a letter to me, I will 
drive up and see them, with a posy and a pot of jelljr. You will 
understand that they must be people who do not ''add perfume 
to the violet'' — in my way — simple. 

I can in no way give you an idea of the beauty of the Che- 
mung river from Brigham's inn to Elmira. We entered immedi- 
ately upon the Narrows — a spot where the river follows into a 
curve of the mountain, like an inlaying of silver around the bottom 
of an emerald cup—the brightest water, the richest foliage — and 
a landscape of meadow, between the horns of the crescent that 
would be like the finest park scenery in England, if the boldness 
of the horizon did not mix with it a resemblance to Switzerland. 

We reached Elmira at sunset. What shall I say of it ? From 
a distance, its situation is most beautiful. It lies (since we have 
begun upon the alphabet) in the tail of a magnificent L, formed 
by the bright winding of the river. Perhaps the surveyor, instead 
of deriving its name from his sweetheart, called it L. mirahile — 
corrupted to vulgar comprehension, Elmira. If he did not, he 
might, and I will lend him the etymology. 

The town is built against a long island, covered with soft green- 
sward, and sprinkled with noble trees ; a promenade of unequalled 
beauty and convenience, hut that all which a village can muster 

VOL. I. 4 



74 LETTER VIL 



of unsiglitliness lias chosen tlie face of the river bank '^ to turn 
its lining to the sun." Fie on you, Elmira ! I intend to get up 
a memorial to Congress, praying that the banks of rivers, in all 
towns settled henceforth, shall be government property, to be 
reserved and planted for public grounds. It was the design of 
Wilham Penn at Philadelphia, and think what a binding it would 
have been to his chequer-board. Fancy a pier and promenade 
along the Hudson at 'New York ! Imagine it a feature of every 
town in this land of glorious rivers ! 

There is a singular hotel at Elmira, (big as a state-house, and 
be-turreted and be-columned according to the most approved sys- 
tem of impossible rent and charges to make it possible,) in the 
plan of which, curious enough, the hed-rooms were entirely forgot- 
ten. The house is all parlors and closets ! We were shown into 
superb drawing-rooms, (one for each party,) with pier-glasses, 
windows to the floor, expensive furniture, and a most polite land- 
lord ; and began to think the civilization for which we had been 
looking east, had stepped over our heads and gone on to the 
Pacific. Excellent supper and civil service. At dark, two very 
taper mutton candles set on the superb marble table — -but that 
was but a trifling incongruity. After a call from a pleasant friend 
or two, and a walk, we made an early request to be shown to our 
bed-rooms. The '^ young lady, that sometimes uses a broom for 
exercise," opened a closet-door with a look of la voila / and left 
us speechless with astonishment. There was a bed of the dimen- 
sions of a saint's niche, bu.t no window by which, if stifled, the 
soul could escape to its destination. Yet here we were, evidently 
abandoned on a hot night in July, with a door to shut if we 
thought it prudent, and a candle-wick like an ignited pood],e-dog, 



HOMES OF GENIUS. ^5 



to a^ist in the process of suffocation ! I hesitated about calling 
up thllandlord, for, as I said before, he was a most polite and 
friendly person ; and> if we were to give up the ghost in that little 
room, it was evidently in the ordinary arrangements of the house. 
<^ Why not sleep in the parlor ?" you will have said. So we did. 
But, like the king of Spain, who was partly roasted because 
nobody came to move back the fire, this obvious remedy did not 
at the instant occur to me. The pier-glass and other splendors 
of course did duty as bed-room furniture, and, I may say, we 
slept sumptuously. Our friends in the opposite parlor did as we 
did, but took the moving of the bed to be, tout honnement, what 
the landlord expected. I do not think so, yet I was well pleased 
with him and his entertainment, and shall stop at the '' Eagle'' 
invariably — if I can choose my apartment. I am not sure 
but, in other parts of the house, the bloodthirsty architect has 
constructed some of these smothering places without parlors. 
God help the unwary traveller ! 

Talking of home, (we were at home to dinner the next day,) I 
wonder whether it is true that adverse fortunes have thrown Mrs. 
Sigourney's beautiful home into the market. It is offered for 
sale, and the newspapers say as much. If so, it is pity, indeed. 
I was there once ; and to leave so dehcious a spot must, I think, 
breed a heart-ache. In general, unless the reverse is extreme, 
compassion is thrown away on those who leave a large house to 
be comfortable in a small one ; but she is a poetess, and a most 
true and sweet one, and has a property in that house, and in all 
its trees and flowers, which can neither be bought nor sold. It 
is robbery to sell it for its apparent value. You can understand, 
for "your spirit is touched to these fine issues," how a tree that 



76 LETTER VIL 



the eye of genius has rested on, while the mind was a^work 
among its bright fancies, becomes the cradle and home of these 
fancies. The brain seems driven out of its workshop if you cut 
it down. So with walks. So with streams. So with the modifi- 
cations of natural beauty seen thence habitually — sunrise, sunset- 
ting, moonlight. In pecuhar places these daily glories take 
pecuhar effects, and in that guise genius becomes accustomed to 
recognize and love them most. Who can buy this at auction ? 
Who can weave this golden mesh in another tree — give the 
same voices to another stream— the same sunset to other hills ? 
This fairy property, invisible as it is, is acquired slowly. Habit, 
long association, the connection with many precious thoughts, (the 
more precious the farther between,) make it precious. To sell 
such a spot for its wood and brick, is to value Tom Moore for 
what he will weigh — Daniel Webster for his superficies. Then 
there will be a time (I trust it is far off) when the property will 
treble even in saleable value. The bee and the poet must be 
killed before their honey is tasted. For how much more would 
Abbotsford sell now than in the lifetime of Scott ? For what 
could you buy Ferney — Burns's cottage— Shakspeare's house at 
Stratford ? I have not the honor of a personal acquaintance with 
Mrs. Sigourney, and can not judge with what philosophy she 
may sustain this reverse. But, bear it well or ill, there can be 
no doubt it falls heavily ; and it is one of those instances, I think, 
where public feeling should be called on to interpose. But in 
what shape ? I have always admired the generosity and readi- 
ness with which actors play for the benefit of a decayed "■ brother 
of the sock.'* Let American authors contribute to make up a 
volume, and let the people of Hartford, who live in the light of 



HOMES OF GENIUS. 77 



this bright spirit, head the subscription with ten thousand copies. 
You live among literary people, dear Doctor, and your '' smile 
becomes you better than any man's in all Phrygia." You can 
set it afloat if you will. My name is among the W's, but I will 
be ready in my small turn. 

*' Now God bVi'you, good Sir Topas !" for on this sheet there 
is no more room, and 1 owe you but one. Correspondence, like 
thistles, ''is not blown away till it hath got too high a top/* 
Adieu. 



LETTER VIII. 

My dear Doctor: What can keep you in town during this in- 
sufferable hot solstice ? I can not fancy, unless you shrink from 
a warm welcome in the country. It is too hot for enthusiasm, 
and I have sent the cart to the hay-field, and crept under the 
bridge in my slippers, as if 1 had found a day to be idle, though 
I promised myself to see the harvest home, without missing sheaf 
or winrow. Yet it must be cooler here than where you are, for I 
see accounts of drought on the sea-board, while, with us, every hot 
noon has bred its thunder- shower, and the corn on the dry hill- 
sides is the only crop not kept back by the moisture. Still, the 
waters are low, and the brook at my feet has depleted to a slen- 
der vein, scarce stouter than the pulse that flutters under your 
thumb in the slightest wrist in your practice. My lobster is miss- 
ing — probably gone to " the springs.'' My swallowlets too, who 
have, ^' as it were, eat paper and drunk ink," have flitted since 
yesterday, like illiterate gipseys, leaving no note of their depar- 
ture. " Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba V The old swallows 
circle about as if they expected them again. Heaven send they 
are not in some crammed pocket in that red school-house, unwil- 
ling listeners to that vexed alphabet, or, perhaps, squeezed to 
death in the varlet's perplexity at crooked S. 



A CHANCE CALL. ^9 



I have blotted that last sentence like a school-boy, but, between 
fche beginning and the end of it, I have lent a neighbor my side- 
hill plough, besides answering, by the way, rather an embarrass- 
ing question. My catechiser lives above me on the drinh, (his 
name for the river,) and is one of those small farmers, common 
here, who live without seeing money from one year's end to the 
other. He never buys ; he trades. He takes a bag of wheat, or 
a fleece, to the village for salt fish and molasses, pays his doctor 
in corn or honey, and '^changes work" with the blacksmith, the 
saddler, and the shoemaker. He is a shrewd man withal, likes 
to talk, and speaks Yankee of the most Bcsotian fetch and purity. 
Imagine a disjointed-looking Enceladus, in a homespun sunflower- 
colored coat, and small yellow eyes, expressive of nothing but the 
merest curiosity, looking down on me by throwing himself over 
the railing like a beggar's wallet of broken meats. 

'^ Good morning, Mr. Willisy !" 

From hearing my name first used in the possessive case, probably, 
(Willis's farm or cow, ) he regularly throws me in that last syllable. 

'^ Ah ! good morning !" (Looking up at the interruption, I 
made that unsightly blot which you have just excused.) 

'' You aint got no side -hill plough ?" 

'' Yes, I have, and I'll lend it to you with pleasure." 

'' Wal ! you're darn'i quick, I warnt a go'n' to ask you quite 
yet. Writin' to your folks at hum ?" 

"No!" 

'' Making out a lease ?" 

"No!" 

"How you do spin it off*! You haint always work'd on a 
farm, have ye ?" 



80 LETTER VIIL 



It is a peculiarity, (a redeeming peculiarity, I think,) of the 
Yankees, that, though their questions are rude, they are never 
surprised if you do not answer them. I did not feel that the 
thermometer warranted me in going into the history of my life 
to my overhanging neighbor, and I busied myself in crossing my 
t's and dotting my i's very industriously. He had a maggot in 
his brain, however, and must e'en be delivered of it. He pulled 
off a splinter or two from under the bridge with his long arms, 
and, during the silence, William came to me with a message, 
which he achieved with his English under-tone of respect. 

'^ Had to lick that boy some, to make him so darn'd civile 
hadn't ye?" 

** You have a son about his age, I think ?" 

" Yes ; but I guess he couldn't be scared to talk that way. 
What's the critter 'feard on ?" 

No answer. 

'^ You haint been a minister, have ye ?" 

-N-o!" 

" Wal ! they talk a heap about your place. / say, Mr. Wil- 
lisy, you aint nothing particular, he yeV 

You should have seen, dear Doctor, the look of eager and puz- 
zled innocence with which this rather difficult question was deliver- 
ed. Something or other had evidently stimulated my good neigh- 
bor's curiosity, but whether I had been blown up in a steamboat, or 
had fatted a prize pig, or what was my claim to the digito mon- 
strari, it was more than half his errand to discover. I have put 
down our conversation, I believe, with the accuracy ^f a short- 
hand writer. Now, is not this a delicious world, in which, out 
of a museum, and neither stuffed nor muzzled, you may find such 



LISTENERS WANTED. 81 



an Arcadian ? What a treasure he would be to those ancient 
mariners of pohte hfe, who exist but to tell you of their little 
peculiarities ! 

I have long thought, dear Doctor, and this reminds me of it, 
that there were two necessities of society, unfitted with a voca- 
tion. (If you know any middle-aged gentleman out of employ- 
ment, I have no objection to your reserving the suggestion for a 
private charity, but otherwise, I would communicate it to the 
world as a new light.) The first is a luxury which no hotel 
should be without, no neighborhood, no thoroughfare, no editor's 
closet. I mean a professed, salaried, stationary, and confidential 
listener. Fancy the comfort of such a thing. There should be a 
well-dressed, silent gentleman, for instance, pacing habitually the 
long corridor of the Astor, with a single button on his coat, of the 
size of a door-handle. You enter in a violent hurry, or with a 
mind tenanted to suit yourself ; and some faineant babbler, weary 
of his emptiness, must needs take you aside, and rob you of two 
mortal hours, more or less, while he tells you his tale of nothing. 
If '' a penny saved is a penny got," what a value it would add 
to lifer to be able to transfer this leech of precious time, by laying 
his hand politely on the large button of the hstener ! " Finish 
your story to this gentleman T' quoth you. Then, again, there 
is your unhappy man in hotels, newly arrived, without an ac- 
quaintance save the crisp and abbreviating bar-keeper, who wan- 
ders up and down, silent-sick, and more sohtary in the crowd 
about him than the hermit on the lone column of the temple of 
Jupiter. What a mercy to such a sufferer to be able to step to 
the bar, and order a listener ! Or, to send for him with a bottle 
of wine when dining alone , (most particularly alone,) at a table 
9* 



82 LETTER VIII. 



of two hundred ! Or, to ring for him in number four hundred 
and ninety-three, of a rainy Sunday, with punch and cigars ! I 
am deceived in Stetson of the Astor, if he is not philosopher 
enough to see the value of this suggestion. '' Baths in a house, 
and a respectable listener if desired," would be an attractive ad- 
vertisement, let me promise you! 

The other vocation to which I referred, would be that of a sort of 
ambulant dictionary, to be used mostly at evening parties. It should 
be a p-entleman not distino^uishable from the common animated wall- 
flower, except by some conventional sign, as a bit of blue riband 
in his button-hole. His qualifications should be to know all per- 
sons moving in the circle, and something about them — to be up, 
in short, to the town gossip — what Miss Thing^s expectations are — 
who " my friend" is with the dyed mustache — and which of the 
stout ladies on the sofa are the forecast shadows of coming balls, 
or the like desirablenesses. There are a thousand invisible cobwebs 
threaded through society, which the stranger is apt to cross 
a travers — committing his enthusiasm, for instance, to the deaf 
ears of a fiancee; or, from ignorance, losing opportunities of 
knowing the clever, the witty, and the famous — -all of whom look, 
at a first glance, very much like other people. The gentleman 
with the blue riband, you see, would remedy all this. You might 
make for him after you bow to the lady of the house, and in ten 
minutes put yourself au courant of the entire field. You might 
apply to him (if you had been absent to Santa Fe or the Pyra- 
mids) for the last new shibboleth, the town rage, the name of the 
new play or poem, the form and color of the freshest change in 
the kaleidoscope of society. It is not uncommon for sensible 
people to retire, and '' sweep and garnish" their self-respect in a 



ADOPTED BY A CUR. 83 



month's seclusion. It is some time before they become advised 
again of what it is necessary to know of the follies of the hour. 
The graceful yet bitter wit, the unoffending yet pointed rally, the 
confidence which colors all defeats like successes, are delicate 
weapons, the dexterity at which depends much on familiarity with 
the ground. What an advent to the diffident and the embar- 
rassed would be such a profession ! Hovf many persons of wit 
and spirit there are, in society, blank for lack of confidence, who, 
with such a friend in the corner, would come out like magic-ink 
to the fire ! '^ Ma hardiessey^^ (says the aspiring rocket,) ^^ vient 
de mon ardour P^ But the device would lose its point did it take 
a jack-o'-lantern for a star. Mention these little hints to your 
cleverest female friend, dear Doctor. It takes a woman to intro- 
duce an innovation. 

Since I wrote to you, I have been adopted — -by perhaps the 
most abominable cur you will see in your travels. I mention it 
to ward off the first impression — for a dog gives a character to a 
house ; and I would not willingly have a friend light on such a 
monster in my premises without some preparation. His first ap- 
parition was upon a small floss carpet at the foot of an ottoman, 
the most luxurious spot in the house, of w^hich he had taken pos- 
session with a quiet impudence that perfectly succeeded. Along, 
short-legged cur, of the color of spoiled mustard, with most base 
tail and erect ears— -villanous in all his marks. Rather a dandy 
gentleman, from l^ew York, was calling on us when he was dis- 
covered, and, presuming the dog to be his, we forbore remark ; 
and, assured by this chance indulgence, he stretched himself to 
sleep. The indignant ou.tcry with which the gentleman disclaimed 
all knowledge of him, disturbed his slumber ; and, not to leave 



84 LETTER VIII. 



US longer in doubt, he walked confidently across the room, and 
seated himself between my feet, with a canine freedom I had 
never seen exhibited, except upon most famihar acquaintance. I 
saw clearly that our visitor looked upon my disclaimer as a 
'^ fetch." It w^ould have been periUing my credit for veracity to 
deny the dog. So no more vfas said about him, and since that 
hour he has kept himself cool in my shadow. I have tried to 
make him over to the kitchen, but he will neither feed nor stay 
with them. I can neither outrun him on horseback, nor lose him 
by crossing ferries. Very much to the discredit of my taste, I 
am now never seen without this abominable follower — and there 
is no help for it, unless I kill him, which, since he loves me, 
would be worse than shooting the albatross ; besides, I have at 
least a drachm (three scruples) of Pythagoreanism in me, and 
" fear to kill woodcock, lest I dispossess the soul of my grandam." 
I shall look to the papers to see what friend I have lost in Italy, 
or the East. I can think of some who might come to me thus. 

Adieu, dear Doctor. Send me a good name for my cur — for 
since he will have me, why I must needs be his, and he shall be 
graced with an appellation. I think his style of politics might 
be worth something in love. If I were the lady, it would make 
a fair beginning. But I will waste no more ink upon you. 



LETTER IX. 

Mr DEAR Doctor : As tliey say an oyster sliould be pleased with 
his apotheosis in a certain sauce, I was entertained with the clev- 
erness of your letter, though you made minced meat of my trout- 
jBshing. Under correction, however, I still cover the barb of my 
*' fly," and so I must do, till I can hook my trout if he but graze 
the bait with his whisker. You are an alumnus of the gentle sci- 
ence, in which I am but a neophyte, and your fine rules presup- 
pose the dexterity of a practiced angler. Now a trout (I have 
observed, in my small way) will jump once at your naked fly ; 
but if he escape, he will have no more on 't, unless there is a 
cross of the dace in him. As it is a fish that follows his nose, 
however, the smell of the worm will bring him to the lure again ; 
and if your awkwardness give him time, he will stick to it till he 
has cleaned the hook. Prohatum est. 

You may say this is unscientific, but, if I am to breakfast from 
the contents of my creel, I must be left with my worm and my 
ignorance. 

Besides — hang rules ! No two streams are alike — -no two men 
(who are not fools) fish alike. Walton and Wilson would find 
some new ^' wrinkle," if they were to try these wild waters ; and, 



86 LETTER IX. 



to generalize the matter, I have, out of mathematics, a distrust of 
rules, descriptions, manuals, etc., amounting to a 'phobia. Expe- 
rience was always new to me. I do not seem to myself ever to 
have seen the Rome I once read of. The Venice I know is not 
the Venice of story nor of travellers' books. There are two Lon- 
dons in my mind— one where I saw whole shelves of my library 
walking about in coats and petticoats, and another where there 
was nothing visible through the fog but fat men with tankards of 
porter — one memory of it all glittering with lighted rooms, bright 
and kind faces, men all manly, and women all womanly ; and an- 
other memory (got from books) where every man was surly, and 
dressed in a buff waistcoat, and every woman a giantess, in riding- 
hat and boots. 

It is delightful to think how new everything is, spite of descrip- 
tion. N'ever believe, dear Doctor, that there is an old world. 
There is no such place, on my honor ! You will find England, 
France, Italy, and the East, after all you have read and heard, as 
altogether new as if they were created by your eye, and were 
never sung, painted, nor be- written — you will indeed. Why — 
to be sure — what were the world else ? A pawnbroker's closet, 
where every traveller had left his clothes for you to wear after 
him ! No ! no ! Thanks to Providence, all things are new ! Pen 
and ink cannot take the gloss off your eyes, nor can any man look 
through them as you do. I do not believe the simplest mat- 
ter — sunshine or verdure — has exactly the same look to any 
two people in the world. How much less a human face — a 
landscape — a broad kingdom ? Travellers are very pleasant peo- 
ple. They tell you what picture was produced in their brain 
by the things they saw ; but, if they forestalled novelty by that^ 



ESTIMATE OF CRITICISM. 8*? 



I would as soon read them as beseech a thief to steal my din- 
ner. How it looks to one pair of eyes ! would be a good reminder 
pencilled on the margin of many a volume. 

I have run my ploughshare, in this furrow, upon a root of 
philosophy, which has cured heart-aches for me, ere now. I 
struck upon it almost accidentally, while administering consola- 
tion, years since, to a sensitive friend, whose muse had been con- 
signed, alive and kicking, to the tomb, by a blundering undertaker 
of criticism. I read the review, and wrote on it, with a pencil, '* So 
thinks one man in fifteen millions ;" and, to my surprise, up 
swore my dejected friend, like Master Barnardine, that he would 
*' consent to die that day, for no man's persuasion." Since that, 
I have made a practice of counting the enemy ; and, trust me, dear 
Doctor, it is sometimes worth v/hile not to run away without this 
little preliminary. A friend, for instance, with a most boding 
solemnity, takes you aside, and pulls from his pocket a newspa- 
per containing a paragraph that is aimed at your book, your 
morals, perhaps your looks and manners. You catch the alarm 
from your friend's face, and fancy it is the voice of public opinion, 
and your fate is fixed. Your book is detestable, your character is 
gone. Your manners and features ai^e the object of universal dis- 
approbation. Stay ! comit the enemy ! Was it decided by a conven- 
tion ? No ! By a caucus ? No ! By a vote on the deck of a 
steamboat ? No ! By a group at the corner of the street, by a 
club, by a dinner-party? No! By whom then? One small 
gentleman, sitting in a dingy corner of a printing-office, who puts 
his quill through your reputation as the entomologist slides a pin 
through a beetle — in the way of his vocation. No particular 
malice to you. He wanted a specimen of the genus poet, and 



88 LETTER IX 



you were the first caught. If there is no head to the pin, (as 
there often is none,) the best way is to do as the beetle does — 
pretend to be killed till he forgets you, and then slip off without 
a buzz. 

The only part of calumny that I ever found troublesome, was 
my friends' insisting on my being unhappy about it. T dare say 
you have read the story of the German criminal, whose last re- 
quest, that his head might be struck off while he stood engaged 
in conversation, was humanely granted by the provost. The 
executioner was an adroit headsman, and, watching his opportu- 
nity, he crept behind his victim while he was observing the flight 
of a bird, and sliced off his bulb without even discomposing his 
gaze. It was suggested to the sufferer, presently, that he was 
decapitated, but he thought not. Upon which, one of his friends 
stepped up, and, begging he would take the pains to stir himself a 
little, his head fell to the ground. If the story be not true, the 
moral is. In the many times I have been put to death by criti- 
cism, I have never felt incommoded, till some kind friend insisted 
upon it ; and now that I can stand on a potato-hill, in a circle of 
twice the diameter of a rifle-shot, and warn off all trespassers, I 
intend to defy sympathy, and carry my top as long as it will stay 
on — behead me as often as you like, beyond my periphery. 

Still though 

" The eagle suffers little birds to sing, 
And is not careful what they mean thereby," 

it is very pleasant, now and then, to pounce upon a bigger bird, 
screaming in the same chorus. Nothing impairs the dignity of 
an author's reputation like a newspaper wrangle, yet one bold 



NEWNESS OF iMPRESSiONS. 89 



literary vulture, struck down promptly and successfully, serves as 
good a purpose as the hawk nailed to the barn-door. But I do 
not live in the country to be pestered with resentments. I do 
not well know how the thoughts of them came under the bridge. 
I'll have a fence that shall keep out such stray cattle, or there 
are no posts and rails in philosophy. 

There is a little mental phenomenon, dear Doctor, which has 
happened to me of late so frequently, that I must ask you if you 
are subject to it, in the hope that your singular talent for analysis 
will give me the '' ponrquoi.^^ I mean a sudden novelty in the 
impression of very familiar objects, enjoyments, etc. For exam- 
ple, did it ever strike you all at once that a tree vv^as a very 
magnificent production ? After looking at lakes and rivers for 
thirty years, (more or less,) have you ever, some fine morning, 
caught sight of a very familiar stream, and found yourself 
impressed with its new and singular beauty ? I do not know that 
the miracle extends to human faces, at least in the same degree. 
T am sure that my old coat is not rejuvenescent. But it is true 
that, from possessing the nil admirari becoming to a ^' picked man 
of countries," (acquired with some pains, I may say,) I now 
catch myself smiling with pleasure to think the river will not all 
run by ; that there will be another sunset to-morrow ; that my 
grain will ripen and nod when it is ripe, and such like every-day 
marvels. Have we scales that drop off our eyes at a " certain 
age ?" Do our senses renew as well as our bodies, only more 
capriciously ? Have we a chrysalis state, here below, like that 
parvenu gentleman, the butterfly ? Still more interesting query 
— does this delicious novelty attach, later in life, or ever, to 
objects of afFection— compensating for the ravages in the form, 



90 LETTER IX. 



the dullness of the senses, loss of grace, temper, and all outward 
loveliness ? I should like to get you over a flagon of Tokay on 
that subject. 

There is a curious fact, I have learned for the first time in this 
v^^ild country, and it may be new to you, that, as the forest is 
cleared, new springs rise to the surface of the ground, as if at 
the touch of the sunshine. The settler knows that water, as well 
as herbage, will start to the light, and, as his axe lets it in upon 
the black bosom of the wilderness, his cattle find both pasture 
and drink, where, before, there had never been either well-head 
or verdure. You have yourself been, in your day, dear Doctor, 
'^ a warped slip of wilderness," and will see at once that there 
lies, in this ordinance of J^ature, a beautiful analogy to certain 
moral changes, that come in upon the heels of more cultivated 
and thoughtful manhood. Of the springs that start up in the 
footsteps of thought and culture, the sources are like those of 
forest springs, unsuspected till they flow. There is no di\ining- 
rod, whose dip shall tell us at twenty, what we shall most relish 
at thirty. We do not think that with experience we shall have 
grown simple ; that things we slight and overlook will have be- 
come marvels ; that our advancement in worth will owe more to 
the cutting away of overgrowth in tastes than to their acquisition 
or nurture. 

I should have thought this change in myself scarce worth so 
much blotting of good paper, but for its bearing on a question 
that has hitherto given me no little anxiety. The rivers flow on 
to the sea, increasing in strength and glory to the last; but we 
have our pride and fullness in youth, and dwindle and fall away 
toward the grave. How I was to grow dull to the ambitions 



GROWING GRACEFULLY OLD 91 



and excitements which constituted my whole existence — be con- 
tent to lag and fall behind, and forego emulation in all possible 
pursuits — in short, how I was to grow old contentedly and grace- 
fully, has been to me somewhat a painful puzzle. With what 
should I be pleased ? How should I fill the vacant halls from 
which had fled merriment and fancy, and hope, and desire ? 

You can scarce understand, dear Doctor, with what pleasure I 
find this new spring in my path — the content with which I admit 
the conviction, that, without effort or self-denial, the mind may 
slake its thirst, and the heart be satisfied with but the waste of 
what lies so near us. I have all my life seen men grow old, tran- 
quilly and content, but I did not think it possible that / should. 
I took pleasure only in that which required young blood to fol- 
low, and I felt that, to look backward for enjoyment, would be at 
best but a difficult resignation. 

N"ow, let it be no prejudice to the sincerity of my philosophy, 
if, as a corollary, I beg you to take a farm on the Susquehannah, 
and let us grow old in company. I should think Fate kinder than 
she passes for, if I could draw you, and one or two others whom 
we know and " love with knowledge," to cluster about this — cer- 
tainly one of the loveliest spots in nature, and, while the river 
glides by unchangingly, shape ourselves to our changes with a 
helping sympathy. Think of it, dear Doctor ! Meantime, I em- 
ploy myself in my rides, selecting situations on the river banks 
which I think would be to yours and our friends' liking ; and in 
the autumn, when it is time to transplant, I intend to suggest to 
the owners where teers might be wanted in case they ever sold, 
so that you will not lose even a season in your shrubbery, though 
you delay your decision. Why should w ■ not renew Ai'cady ? 
God bless you. 



LETTER X. 

You may congratulate me on tlie safe getting in of my harvest, 
dear Doctor ; for I have escaped, as you may say, in a parenthe- 
sis. Two of the most destructive hail-storms remembered in this 
part of the country have prostrated the crops of my neighbors, 
above and below- — leaving not a blade of corn, nor an unbroken 
window ; yet there goes my last load of grain into the barn, well- 
ripened, and cut standing and fair. 

" Some bright little cherub, that sits up aloft, 
Keeps watch for the soul of poor Peter." 

I confess I should have fretted at the loss of my firstlings, 
more than for a much greater disaster in another shape. I have 
expended curiosity, watching, and fresh interest upon my uplands, 
besides plaster and my own labor ; and the getting back five 
hundred bushels for five or ten, has been, to me, through all its 
beautiful changes from April till now, a w^onder to be enjoyed 
like a play. To have lost the denouement by a hail-storm, would 
be like a play with the fifth act omitted, or a novel with the last 
leaf torn out. Now, if no stray spark set fire to my barn, I can 
pick you out the whitest of a thousand sheaves, thrash them with 



GOOD PHRASES. 93 



the first frost, and send you a barrel of Glenmary flour, which 
shall be, not only very excellent bread, but should have also a 
flavor of wonder, admiration — all the feelings, in short, with 
which I have v/atched it, from seed-time to harvest. Yet there 
is many a dull dog will eat of it, and remark no taste of me! 
And so there are men who will read a friend's book as if it were 
a stranger's — but we are not of those. If we love the man, 
whether we eat a potato of his raising, or read a verse of his in- 
diting, there is in it a sweetness which has descended from his 
heart — by quill or hoe-handle. I scorn impartiality. If it be a 
virtue. Death and Posterity may monopolize it for me. 

I was interrupted a moment since by a neighbor, who, though 
innocent of reading and writing, has a coinage of phraseology 
which would have told in authorship. A stray mare had broken 
into his peas, and he came to me to write an advertisement for 
the court-house door. After requesting the owner " to pay 
charges and take her away," in good round characters, I recom- 
' mended to my friend, who was a good deal vexed at the trespass, 
to take a day's work out of her. 

<' Why, I haint no job on the mounting," said he, folding up 
the paper very carefully. '' It's a side-hill critter ! Two off legs 
so lame, she can't stand even." 

It was certainly a new idea, that a horse with two spavins on a 
side, might be used with advantage on a hill farm. While I was 
jotting it down for your benefit, my neighbor had emerged from 
under the bridge, and was climbing the railing over my head. 

'' What will you do if he won't pay damages ?" I cried out. 

"Fut the types on to him!'^ he answered ; and, jumping into 
the road, strided away to post up his advertisement. 



94 LETTER X. 



I presume, that ^' to put the types on to" a man, is to send the 
constable to him with a printed warrant ; but it is a good phrase. 

The hot weather of the last week has nearly dried up the 
brook, and, forgetting to water my young trees in the hurry of 
harvesting, a few of them have hung out the quarantine yellow 
at the top, and, I fear, will scarce stand it till autumn. Not to 
have all my hopes in one venture, and that a frail one, I have set 
about converting a magnificent piece of wild jungle into an aca- 
demical grove — an occupation that makes one feel more like a 
viceroy than a farmer. Let me interest you in this metempsy- 
chosis ; for, if we are to grow old together, as I proposed to you 
in my last, this grove will lend its shade to many a slippered 
noontide, and echo, we will hope, the philosophy of an old age, 
wise and cheerful. Aptly for my design, the shape of the grove 
is that of the Greek O — the river very nearly encircling it ; and 
here, if I live, I will pass the Omega of my life ; and, if you will 
come to the christening, dear Doctor, so shall the grove be 
named, in solemn ceremony — The Omega. 

How this nobly-wooded and water-clasped little peninsula has 
been suffered to run to waste, I know not. It contains some 
half-score acres of rich interval ; and to the neglect of previous 
occupants of the farm, I probably owe its gigantic trees, as well 
as its weedy undergrowth, and tangled vines. Time out of mind 
(five years, in this country) it has been a harbor for woodcocks, 
wood- ducks, minks, wild bees, humming-birds, and cranes — (two 
of the latter still keeping possession) — and its labyrinth of tall 
weeds, interlaced with the low branches of the trees, was seldom 
penetrated, except once or twice a year by the sportsman, and as 
often by the Owaga in its freshet. Scarce suspecting the size of 



GROVE-PLANTING. 95 



the trees within, whose trunks were entirely concealed, I have 
looked upon its towering mass of verdure but as a superb eme- 
rald wall, shutting the meadows in on the east — and, though 
within a lance-shot of my cottage, have neglected it, like my pre- 
decessors, for more manageable ground. 

I have enjoyed very much the planting of young wood, and. 
the anticipation of its shade and splendor in Heaven's slow, but 
good time. It was a pleasure of Hope ; and, to men of leisure 
and sylvan taste in England, it has been — literature bears wit- 
ness—a pursuit full of dignity and happiness. But the redemp- 
tion of a venerable grove from the wilderness, is an enjoyment of 
another measure. It is a kind of playing of King Lear back- 
ward — discovering the old monarch in his abandonment, and 
sweeping off his unnatural offspring, to bring back the sunshine 
to his old age, and give him room, with his knights, in his own 
domain. You knov/ how trees that grow wild near water, in this 
country, put out foliage upon the trunk as well as the branches, 
covering it, like ivy, to the roots. It is a beautiful caprice of 
Nature ; but the grandeur of the dark and massive stem is en- 
tirely lost — and I have been as much surprised at the giant 
bodies we have developed, stripping off this unfitting drapery, as 
Richard at the thews and sinews of the uncowled friar of Cop- 
manhurst. 

You can not fancy, if you have never exercised this grave au- 
thority, how many difficulties of judgment arise, and how often 
a jury is wanted to share the responsibility of the irretrievable 
axe. I am slow to condemn ; and the death-blow to a living 
tree, however necessary, makes my blood start, and my judgment 
half repent. There are, to-day, several under reprieve — one of 



96 LETTER X. 



them a beautiful linden, which I can see from my seat under the 
bridge, nodding just now to the vfind, as careless of its doom 
as if it were sure its briofht foliao^e would flaunt out the summer. 

o o 

In itself it is well worth the sparing and cherishing, for it is 
full of life and youth — and, could I transplant it to another spot, 
it would be invaluable. But, though full grown and spreading, 
it stands among giants, whose branches meet above it at twice its 
height ; and, while it contributes nothing to the shade, its smaller 
trunk looks a Lilliputian in Brobdignag, out of keeping and pro- 
portion. So I think it must come down — and, with it, a dozen 
in the same category — condemned, like many a wight who 
was well enough in his place, for being found in too good com- 
pany. 

There is a superstition about the linden, by the way, to which 
the peculiarity in its foliage may easily have given rise. You 
may have remarked, of course, that, from the centre of the leaf, 
starts a slender stem, which bears the linden-flower. Our 
Saviour is said, by those who beheve in the superstition, to have 
been crucified upon this tree, which has ever since borne the 
flowering type of the nails driven into it through his palms. 

Another, whose doom is suspended, is a ragged sycamore, 
whose decayed branches are festooned to the highest top by a 
wild grape-vine, of the most superb fruitfulness and luxuriance. 
No wife ever pleaded for a condemned husband with more elo- 
quence than these dehcate tendrils to me, for the rude tree with 
whose destiny they are united. I wish you were here, dear Doc- 
tor, to say, spare it, or cut it doim. In itself, like the linden, it 
is a splendid creature ; but, alas ! it spoils a long avenue of stately 
trees opening toward my cottage porch; and I fear policy must 



FOREST SCULPTURE. 97 



outweigh pity. I shall let it stand over Sunday, and fortify my- 
self with an opinioiL 

Did you ever try your hand, dear Doctor, at this forest-sculp- 
ture? It sounds easy enough to trim out a wood, and so it is if 
the object be merely to produce butternuts, or shade grazing 
cattle. But to thin, and trim, and cut down, judiciously, chang- 
ing a " wild and warped slip of wilderness" into a chaste and 
studious grove, is not done without much study of the spot, 
let alone a taste for the sylvan. There are all the many effects of 
the day's light to be observed— how morning throws her shadows, 
and what protection there is from noon, and where is flung open 
an aisle to let in the welcome radiance of sunset. There is a view 
of water to be let through, perhaps, at the expense of trees oth- 
erwise ornamental, or an object to hide by shrubbery which is in 
the way of an avenue. I have lived here as long as this year's 
grasshoppers, and am constantly finding out something which 
should have a bearing on the disposition of grounds or the sculpture 
(permit me the word) of my wood and forest. I am sorry to finish 
'' the Omega" without your counsel and taste ; but there is a 
wood on the hill which I will keep, like a cold pie, till you come 
to us, and we will shoulder our axes and carve it into likelihood 
together. 

And now here comes my Yankee axe (not curtal) which I sent 
to be ground when I sat down to scrawl you this epistle. As 
you owe the letter purely to its dullness, (and mine,) I must away 
to a half-felled tree, which I deserted in its extremity. If there 
were truth in Ovid, what a butcher I were ! Yet there is a 
groan when a tree falls, which sometimes seems to me more than 

VOL. I. 5 



98 LETTER X. 



the sundering .^f splinters. Adieu, dear Doctor, and believe 
that 

" Whate'er the ocean pales or sky inclips 
Is thine," 

if I can give it you by wishing. 



LETTER XI. 

The box of Rhenish is no substitute for yourself, dear Doctor, 
but it was most welcome — partly, perhaps, for the qualities it 
has in common with the gentleman who should have come in the 
place of it. The one 'bottle that has fulfilled its destiny, was 
worthy to have been sunned on the Rhine and drank on the Sus- 
quehannah, and I will never believe that anything can come from 
you that will not improve upon acquaintance. So I shall treasure 
the remainder for bright hours. I should have thought it supe- 
rior, even to the Tokay I tasted at Vienna, if other experiments 
had not apprised me that country life sharpens the universal 
relish. I think that even the delicacy of the palate is affected by 
the confused sensations, the turmoil, the vexations of life in town. 
You will say you have your quiet chambers, where you are as 
little disturbed by the people around you as I by my grazing 
herds. But, by your leave, dear Doctor, the fountains of thought 
(upon which the senses are not a little dependent) will not clear 
and settle over-night like a well. 'No — nor in a day, nor in two. 
You must live in the country to possess your bodily sensations, as 
well as your mind, in tranquil control. It is only when you have 
forgotten streets and rumors and greetings — forgotten the whip 



100 LETTER XI, 



of punctuality, and the hours of forced pleasures— only when 
you have cleansed your ears of the din of trades, the shuffle of 
feet, the racket of wheels, and coarse voices — only when- your 
own voice, accustomed to contend against discords, falls, through 
the fragrant air of the country, into its natural modulations, in 
harmony with the low key upon which runs all the music of Na- 
ture — only when that part of the world which partook not of the 
fall of Adam, has had time to affect you with its tranquillity:^— 
only then, that the dregs of life sink out of sight, and, while the 
soul sees through its depths, like the sun through untroubled- 
water, the senses lose their fever and false energy, and play their 
part, and no more, in the day's expenditure of time and pulsa- ■ 
tion. 

'' Still harping on my daughter,'' you will say ; and I will 
allow that I can scarce write a letter to you without shaping it to 
the end of attracting you to the Susquehannah.^ At least, watch 
when you begin to grow old, and transplant yourself in time to 
take root, and then we may do as the ti]f es do— defy the weather 
till we are separated. The oak,. itself, if it has grown up with its 
kindred thick about it^ will break if left standing ^alone ; and you 
and I, dear Doctor, have knov/n the luxury of frjends too well to 
bear the loneliness, of an unsympathizing old age. Friends are 
not' pebbles, lying in every path, but pearls gathered with pain, 
and rare as they are precious. We spend our youth and man- 
hood in the search and proof of them, and, when Death has 
taken his. toll, we have too few to scatter — none to throw away: 
I, for one, will be a'^miser of mine. I feel the avarice of friend- 
ship growing on me with every year — tightening my hold and 
extending my grasp. Who, at -sixty, is rich in friends? The 



OLD xMAN S UTOPIA. IQl 



richest are those who have drawn this wealth of angels around 
them, and spent care and thought on the treasuring. Come, my 
dear Doctor ! I have cjiosen a spot on one of the loveliest of our 
brigjit rivers. Here is all that goes to make an Arcadia, except 
the friendly dwellers in its shade. I will choose your hillside, 
and plant your grove, that the trees, at least, shall lose no time 
by your delay. Set a limit to your ambition, achieve it, and 
come away. It is terrible to grow old amid the jostle and disre- 
spectful hurry of a crowd. The Academy of the philosophers 
\Y8iS' out of Athens. You can not fancy Socrates run against, in 
the market-place. Respect, which grows wild in the fields, 
requires watching and management in cities. Let us have an old 
man's Arcady— where we can slide our " slippered shoon'' 
through groves of our own consecrating, and talk of the world as 
withoilt — ourselves and gay philosophy within. I have strings 
pulling upon one or^ two in other lands, who, like ourselves, are not 
men to let Content walk unrecognized in their path. Slowly, but, 
I think, surely, they are arawing thitherward ; and I have chosen 
places for their hearthstones, too, and shall watch, as I do for 
you, that the woodman's axe cuts down no tree that would be 
regretted. If the cords draw .well, and Death take but his tithe, 
my shady ^' Omega" will soon learn voices to which its echo will 
for long years be familiar, and the Owaga and Susquehannah 
will join waters within sight of an old mans. Utopia. 

"My sentiments better expressed" have come in the poet's 
corner of the Albion to-day — a paper, by the way, remarkable 
for its good selection of poetry. You will allow th4t these two 
verses, which are the closing ones of a pieqe called '''The men 
of old," are above the common run of ne\VspRiper fu^itive% : — 



102 LETTER XL 



" A man's best things are nearest him. 

Lie close about his feet ; 
It is the distant and the dim 

That we are sick to greet : 
For flowers that grow our hands beneath 

We struggle and aspire, 
Our hearts must die except we breathe 

The air of fresh desire. 

But, brothers, who up reason's hill 

Advance with hopeful cheer, 
Oh, loiter not ! those heights are chill, 

As chill as they are clear, 
And still restrain your haughty gaze — 

The loftier that ye go, 
Rememhering distance leaves a haze 

On all that lies helowV 

The man who wrote that, is hereby presented with the freedom 
of the Omega. 

The first of September, and a frost ! The farmers from the 
hills are mom-ning over their buckwheat, but the river-mist saves 
all which lay low enough for its white wreath to cover ; and 
mine, though sown on the hillside, is at mist-mark, and so esca- 
ped. Nature seems to intend that I shall take kindly to farming, 
and has spared my first crop even the usual calamities. I have 
lost but an acre of corn, I think, and that by the crows, who are 
privileged marauders, welcome at least to build in the Omega, 
and take their tithe without rent-day or molestation, I like their 
noise, though discordant. It is the minor in the anthem of Nature 
— making the gay sound of the blackbird, and the merry chirp of 
the robin and oriole, more gay and cheerier. Then there is q, 



SOUNDS OF NATURE AND CITIES. 103 



sentiment about the raven family , and for Shakspeare's lines and 
his dear sake, I love them. 

" Some say the ravens foster forlorn children 
The while their own birds famish in their nests." 

The very name of a good deed shall protect them. Who shall 
say that poetry is a vain art, or that poets are irresponsible for 
the moral of their verse ? For Burns' s sake, not ten days since, I 
beat off my dog from the nest of a field-mouse, and forbade the 
mowers to cut the grass over her. She has had a poet for her 
friend, and her thatched roof is sacred. I should not like to 
hang about the neck of my soul all the evil that, by the last 
day, shall have had its seed in Byron's poem of the Corsair. It 
is truer of poetry than of most other matters, that 

" More water glideth by the mill 
Than wots the miller of." 

But I am slipping into a sermon. 

Speaking of music, some one said here, the other day, that the 
mingled hum of the sounds of Nature, and the distant murmur of 
a city, product, invariably, the note F in music. The voices of 
all tune, the blacksmith's anvil and the wandering organ, the 
church bells and the dustman's, the choir and the cart-wheel, the 
widow's cry and the bride's laugh, the prisoner's clanking chain 
and the school-boy's noise at play — at the height of the church 
steeple are one! It is all '' F" two hundred feet in air ! The 
swallow can outsoar both our joys and miseries, and the lark — 
what are they in his chamber of the sun ? If you have any 
unhappiness at the moment of receiving this letter, dear Doctor, 



104 LETTER XL 



try this bit of philosophy. It's all F where the bird flies ! You 
have no wings to get there, you say, but your mind has more 
than the six of the cherubim, and in your mind lies the grief you 
would be rid of. As Caesar says, 

" By all the gods the Romans bow before, 
I here discard my sickness." 

I'll be above F, and let troubles hang below. ¥/hat a twopenny 
matter it makes of all our cares and vexations ! I'll find a boy to 
climb to the top of a tall pine I have, and tie me up a white flag, 
which shall be above hig^h-sorrow mark henceforth. I will neither 
be elated or grieved without looking at it. It floats at *' F," 
where it is all one ! Why, it will be a castle in the air, indeed — 
impregnable to unrest. Why not, dear Doctor ? Why should 
we not set up a reminder, that our sorrows are only so deep — 
that the lees are but at the bottom, and there is good wine at 
the top — that there is an atmosphere but a little above us where 
our sorrows melt into our joys ? l^o man need be unhappy who 
can see the grasshopper of a church-vane. 

It is surprising how mere a matter of animal spirits is the 
generation of many of our bluest devils ; and it is more surprising 
that we have neither the memory to recall the trifles that have 
put them to the flight, nor the resolution to combat their approach. 
A man will be ready to hang himself in the morning for an an- 
noyance that he has the best reason to know would scarce give 
him a thought at night. Even a dinner is a doughty devil-queller. 
How true is the apology of Menenius, when Coriolanus had re- 
pelled his friertd ! 



MODIFIED BENEVOLENCE. 106 



" He had not dined. 
The veins unfilled, our blood is cold, and then 
We pout upon the morning : are unapt 
To give or to forgive ; but when we have stuffed 
These pipes, and these conveyances of our blood, 
With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls 
Than in our priest-like fasts. Therefore I'll watch him 
Till he be dieted to my request." 

I have recovered my spirits, ere now, by a friend asking me 
what was the matter. One seems to want but the suggestion, 
the presence of mind, the expressed wish, to be happy any day. 
My white flag shall serve me that good end. " Tut, man !" it 
shall say, *^ your grief is not grief where I am ! Send your 
imagination this high to be whitewashed ?" 

Our weather, to-day, is a leaf out of October's book, soft, yet 
invigorating. The harvest moon seems to have forgotten her 
mantle last night, for there lies on the landscape a haze, that, to 
be so delicate, should be born of moonlight. The boys report 
plenty of deer tracks in the woods close by us, and the neighbors 
tell me they browse in troops on my buckwheat by the light of 
the moon Let them ! I have neither trap nor gun on my 
premises, and Shakspeare shall be their sentinel too. At least, 
no Robin or Diggory shall shoot them without complaint or 
damage ; though if you were here, dear Doctor, I should, most 
likely, borrow a gun, and lie down with you in the buckwheat, to 
see you bring down the fattest. And so do our partialities 
modify our benevolence. I fear I should compound for a visit 
by the slaughter of the whole herd. Perhaps you will come to 
shoot deer, and with that pleasant hope I will close my letter. 



LETTER XII. 

I HAVE neaily had my breath taken away this morning, dear 
Doctor, by a grave assurance, from a railroad commissioner, that 
five years hence I should '' devour the way" between this and 
New York in seven hours. Close on the heels of this gentleman 
came an engineer of the canal, who promised me, as trippingly, 
that, in three years, I should run in a packet-boat from my cottage 
to tide-water. This was intended, in both cases, I presume, to 
be very pleasant intelligence. With a little time, I dare say, I 
shall come to think it so. But I assure you, at present, that, of all 
dwellers upon the canal route, myself, and the toads disentombed 
by the blasting of the rocks, are, perhaps, the most unpleasantly 
surprised — they, poor hermits, fancying themselves safe from the 
troubles of existence till doomsday^ and I as sure that my cot- 
tage was at a safe remove from the turmoil of city propinquity. 

If I am compelled to choose a hearthstone again, (God knows 
whether Broadway will not reach bodily to this,) I will employ 
an engineer to find me a spot, if indeed there be one, which has 
nothing behind it or about it, or in its range, which could, by any 
chance, make it a thoroughfare. There is a charm to me in an 
^?^-navigable river, which brought me to the Susquehannah. I 



SECLUSION, IN A PROSPECT. 107 



like the city sometimes, and I bless Heaven for steamboats ; but 
I love haunts where I neither see a steamboat nor expect the 
city. What is the Hudson but a great highroad ? You may 
have your cottage, it is true, and live by the water-side in the 
shade, and be a hundred miles, more or less, from the city. But 
every half-hour comes twanging through your trees the clang of 
an untuneable bell, informing you, whether you will or no, that 
seven hundred cits are seething past your solitude. You must 
be an abstracted student indeed, if you do not look after the noisy 
intruder till she is lost to the eye. Then follow conjectures 
what news may be on board, what friends may be passing un- 
known, what celebrities, or oddities, or wonders of beauty, may 
be mingling in the throng upon her decks ; and, by the time you 
remember again that you are in the country, there sounds another 
bell, and another discordant whiz, and so your mind is plucked 
awa.y to city thoughts and associations, while your body sits alone 
and discontented amid the trees. 

Now, for one, I like not this divorce. If I am to be happy, 
my imagination must keep my body company, and both must be 
in the country, or both in town. With all honor to Milton, who 
avers — 

" The mind is its own place, and ^?^ itself 
Can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell," 

my mnid to make a heaven, requires the society of its material 
halt. Though my pores take in a palpable pleasure from the 
soft air of morning, my imagination feeds twice as bountifully, 
foraging amid the sunshine and verdure with my two proper 
e3^es ; and, in turn, my fancy feeds more steadily when I breathe 



108 LETTER Xn, 



and feel what she is abroad in. Ask the traveller which 
were his mihappiest hours under foreign skies. If he is of my 
mind, he will say, they were those in which his thoughts (by let- 
ters or chance news) were driven irresistibly home, leaving his 
eyes blind and his ears deaf, in the desert or the strange city. 
There are persons, I know, who make a pleasure of revery, and, 
walking on the pavement, will be dreaming of fields, and in the 
fields think only of the distractions of town. But, with me, 
absent thoughts, unless to be rid of disagreeable circumstances, 
are a disease. When in health, I am all together, what there is 
of me — soul and body, head and heart— and a steamboat that 
should daily cut the line of my horizon, with human interest 
enough on board to take my thoughts with her when she disap- 
peared, would, to my thinking, be a daily calamity. I thank 
God that the deep shades of the Omega lie between my cottage 
and the track of both canal and railroad. I live in the lap of a 
semicircle of hills, and the diameter, I am pleased to know, is 
shorter than the curve. There is a green and wholesome half 
mile, thickly wooded, and mine own to keep so, between my 
threshold and the surveyor's line, and, like the laird's Jock, 1 
shall be '' aye sticking in a tree." 

Do not think, dear Doctor, that I am insensible to the grandeur 
of the great project to connect Lake Erie with the Hudson by 
railroad, or that I do not feel a becoming interest in my country's 
prosperity. I would fain have a farm where my cattle and I can 
ruminate without fear of falling asleep on a rail -track, or slipping 
into a canal ; but there is an imaginative and a bright side to 
these improvements, vv^hich I look on as often as on the other. 
What should prevent ^team-posimg, for example — not in confined 



TRAVELLING COTTAGE. - 109 



and cramped carriages, suited to the strength of a pair of horses, 
but in airy and commodious apartments, furnished hke a bach- 
elor's lodgings, with bed, kitchen, and servants ? What should 
prevent the transfer of such a structure from railroad to canal- 
boat, as occasion required ? In five years, probably, there will 
pass through this village a railroad and a canal, by which, 
together, we shall have an unbroken chain of canal and railroad 
communication with most of the principal sea-board cities of this 
country, and with half the towns and objects of curiosity in the 
west and north. 

I build a tenement on wheels, considerably longer than the 
accommodations of single gentlemen at hotels, with a small 
kitchen, and such a cook as pleases the genius of republics. The 
vehicle shall be furnished, we will say, with tangent movable 
rails, or some other convenience for wheeling off the track when- 
ever there is occasion to stop or loiter. As I said before, it should 
be arranged also for transfer to a boat. In either case there shall 
be post-horses, as upon the English roads, ready to be put to, at 
a moment's v^arning, and capable, upon the railroad at least, of 
a sufficient rate of speed. What could be more delightful or 
more easy than to furnish this ambulatory cottage with light 
furniture from your stationary home, cram it with books, and 
such little refinements as you most miss abroad, and, purchas- 
ing provisions by the way, travel under your oivn roof from one 
end of the country to the other ? Imagine me sending you word, 
some fine morning, from Jersey City, to come over and breakfast 
with me at my cottage, just arrived by railroad from the country ? 
Or, going to the Springs with a house ready furnished ? Or, 
inviting you to accept of my hospitality during a trip to Baltimore, 



110 LETTER XII. 



or Cincinnati J or Montreal ? The Englisii have anticipated this 
luxury in their expensive private yachts, with which they traverse 
the Levant, and drink wine from their own cellars at Joppa and 
Trebizond ; but what is that to travelling the same distance on 
land, without storms or sea-sickness, with the choice of compan- 
ions every hour, and at a hundredth part of the cost ? The 
snail has been before us in the invention. 

I presume, dear Doctor, that even you would be obliged to fish 
around considerably to find Owego on the map ; yet the people, 
here, expect in a year or two to sit at their windows, and see all 
the fashion and curiosity, as well as the dignity and business of 
the world go by. The little village, to which prosperi^^^^ 

" Is as the osprey to the fish, who takes it 
By sovereignty of nature,'* 

lies at the joint of a great cross of northern and western travel. 
The Erie railroad will intersect here the canal which follows the 
Susquehannah to the Chenango, and you may as well come to 
Glenmary if you wish to see your friend, the General, on his 
annual trip to the Springs. Think what a superb route it will 
be for southern travellers ! Instead of being filtered through all 
the sea-board cities, at great cost of money and temper, they will 
strike the Susquehannah at Columbia, and follow its delicious 
windings past W3^oming to Owego, where, turning west, they 
may steam up the small lakes to Niagara, or, keeping on the 
Chenango, track that exquisite river by canal to the Mohawk, and 
so on to the Springs— all the way by the most lovely river-courses 
in the world. Pure air, new scenery, and a near and complete 
escape from the cities in the hot months, will be (the 0-egoists 



LOVE OF SUNSHINE. m 



think) inducements enough to bring the southern cities, rank and 
file, in annual review before us. The canal-boat, of course, will 
be " the genteel thing" among the arrivals in this metropolis. 
Pleasure north and south, business east and west. We shall take 
our fashions from New Orleans, and I do not despair of seeing a 
cafe on the Susquehannah, with a French dame de comptoir, 
marble tables, and the Picayune newspaper. If my project of 
travelling cottages should succeed, I shall offer the skirt of my 
Omega to such of my !N"ew Orleans friends as would like to pas- 
ture a cow during the summer, and when they and the orioles 
migrate in the autumn, why, we will up cottage and be off to the 
south too — freeze who likes in Tioga. 

I wish my young trees liked this air of Italy as well as I. This 
ten days' sunshine has pinched their thirsty tops, and it looks hke 
mid-autumn from my seat under the bridge. No water, save a 
tricklet in the early morning. But such weather for picknick- 
ing ! The buckwheat is sun-dried, and will yield but half a crop. 
The deer come down to the spring-heads, and the snakes creep 
to the river. Jenny toils at the deep-down well-bucket, and the 
minister prays for rain. I love the sun, and pray for no advent 
but yours. 

You have never seen, I dare be certain, a volume of poems 
called *^ Mundi et Cordis Carmina," by Thomas Wade. It is 
one of those volumes killed, like my trees, in the general drought 
of poesy, but there is stuff in it worth the fair type on which it is 
printed, though Mr. Wade takes small pains to shape his verse to 
the common comprehension. I mention him now, because, in 
looking over his volume, I find he has been before me in particular- 
izing the place where a letter is written, and goes beyond me, by 



112 ' LETTER Xll. 



specifying also the place where it should be read, ** The Pen- 
cilled Letter" and its ''Answer/' are among his most intelligible 
poems, and I will give you their concluding lines, as containing a 
new idea in amatory correspondence : 

" Dearest, love me still ; 
I know new objects must thy spirit fill ; 
But yet I pray thee, do not love me les«? ; 
This ivrite I where I dress. Bless thee 1 for ever bless !" 

The reply has a very pretty conclusion, aside from the final 
oddity : 

" Others may inherit 
My heart's wild perfume ; but the flower is thine. 
This read where thou didst write. All blessings round thee throng." 

It is in your quality as bachelor that you get the loan of this 
idea, for in love, ''a trick not worth an egg," so it be new, is 
worth the knowing. 

Here's a precious coil ! The red heifer has chewed up a lace 
cape, and the breachy ox has run over the '' bleach and laven- 
der" of a seven days' wear and washing. It must be laid to the 
drought, unless a taste for dry lace as well as wet can be proved 
on the peccant heifer. The ox would to the drink — small blame 
to him. But lace is expensive fodder, and the heifer must be 
*' hobbled" — so swears the washerwoman. 

" Her injury 
's the jailer to her pity." 

I have only the '' turn overs" left, dear Doctor, and I will cover 
them with one of Mr. Wade's sonnets, which will serve you, 



EPITHALAMIUM. 113 



should you have occasion, for an epithalamium. It is called "the 
Bride/' and should be read fasting by a bachelor : 

" Let the trim tapers burn exceeding brightly ! 
And the white bed be decked as for a goddess, 
Who must be pillowed, like high vesper, nightly 
On couch ethereal ! Be the curtains fleecy, 
Like vesper's fairest, when calm nights are breezy- 
Transparent, parting — showing what they hide, 
Or strive to veil — by mystery deified ! 
The floor, gold carpet, that her zone and boddice 
May lie in honor where they gently fall, 
Slow loosened from her form symmetrical — 
Like mist from sunlight. Burn, sweet odors, burn I 
For incense at the altar of her pleasure ! 
Let music breathe with a voluptuous measure, 
And witchcrafts trance her wheresoe'er she tura" 



LETTER XIII. 

This is not a very prompt answer to your last, my dear Doctor, 
for I intended to have taken my brains to you bodily, and replied 
to all your *' wbether-or-noes" over a broiled oyster at ^^ '^ ^ '^, 
Perhaps I may bring this in my pocket. A brace of ramblers, 
brothers of my own, detained me for a while, but are flitting to- 
day ; and Bartlett has been here a week, to whom, more particu- 
larly, I wish to do the honors of the scenery. We have climbed 
every hill-top that has the happiness of looking down on the 
Owaga and Susquehannah, and he agrees with me that a more 
lovely and habitable valley has never sat to him for its picture. 
Fortunately, on the day of his arrival, the dust of a six weeks' 
drought was washed from its face, and, barring the wilt that 
precedes autumn, the hillsides were in holy day green and looked 
their fairest. He has enriched his portfolio with four or five de- 
licious sketches, and if there were gratitude or sense of renown in 
trees and hills, they would have nodded their tops to the two of 
us. It is not every valley or pine tree that finds painter and his- 
torian, but these are as insensible as beauty and greatness were 
ever to the claims of their trumpeters. 

How long since was it that I wrote to you of Bartlett's visit to 



VISIT FROM AN ARTIST. 115 



Constantinople ? Not more than four or ^ye weeks, it seems to 
me, and yet, here he is, on his return from a professional trip to 
Canada, with all its best scenery snug in his portmanteau ! He 
teamed to Turkey and back, and steamed again to America, and 
will be once more in England in some twenty days — having visited 
and sketched the two extremities of the civilized world. Why, I 
might farm it on the Susquehannah and keep my town-house in 
Constantinople — (with money.) It seemed odd to me to turn over 
a drawing-book, and find on one leaf a freshly-pencilled sketch of a 
mosque, and on the next a view of Glenmary — my turnip-field in 
the foreground. And then the man himself— pulling a Turkish 
para and a Yankee shinplaster from his pocket with the same 
pinch — shuffling to breakfast, in my ahri on the Susquehannah, in 
a pair of peaked slippers of Constantinople, that smell as freshly 
of the bazar as if they were bought yesterday — waking up with 
' pekJcef pelcJcef my good fellow !" when William brings him his 
boots — and never seeing a blood-red maple (just turned with 
the frost) without fancying it the sanguine flag of the Bosphorus 
or the bright jacket of a Greek ! All this unsettles me strangely. 
The phantasmagoria of my days of vagabondage flit before my 
eyes again. This, '' by-the-by, do you remember, in Smyrna ?" 
and " the view you recollect from the Seraglio !'' and such like 
shp-slop of travellers, heard within reach of my corn and pump- 
kins, affects me like the mad poet's proposition : 

" To twitch the rainbow from the sky, 
And spUce both ends together." 

I have amused my artist friend since he has been here, with 



116 LETTER XIII. 



an entertainment not quite as expensive as the Holly Lodge fire- 
works, but quite as beautiful — the burning of log-heaps. Instead 
of gossiping over the tea-table, these long and chilly evenings, 
the three or four young men who have been staying with us 
were very content to tramp into the woods with a bundle of straw 
and a match-box, and they have been initiated into the mysteries 
of '^picking and piling,'' to the considerable improvement of the 
glebe of Glenmary. Shelley says, 

" Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is ;" 

and I am inclined to think that there are varieties of glory in its 
phenomena which would make it worthy even your metropolitan 
while to come to the West and '' burn fallow." At this season 
of the year — after the autumn droughts, that is to say — the 
whole country here is covered with a thin smoke, stealing up 
from the fires on every hill, in the depths of the woods, and on 
the banks of the river ; and, what with the graceful smoke-wreaths 
by day, and the blazing beacons all around the horizon by night, 
it adds much to the variety, and, I think, more to the beauty of 
our western October. It edifies the traveller who has bought 
wood by the pound in Paris, or stiffened for the want of it in the 
disforested Orient, to stand off, a rifle-shot, from a crackling 
wood, and toast himself by a thousand cords, burnt for the rid- 
dance. What experience I have had of these holocausts on my 
own land has not diminished the sense of waste and wealth with 
which I first watched them. Paddy's dream of '' rolling in a bin 
of gold guineas," could scarce have seemed more luxurious. 

Bartlett and I, and the rest of us, in our small way, burnt 
enough, I dare say, to have made a comfortable drawing-room of 



LOG-BURNING. 117 



Hyde Park in January, and the eflfects of the white hght upon 
the trees above and around were glorious. But our fires were 
piles of logs and brush — small beer, of course, to the conflagra- 
tion of a forest. I have seen one that was like the Thousand 
Columns of Constantinople ignited to a red heat, and covered v/ith 
carbuncles and tongues of flame. It was a temple of fire — the 
floor, living coals — the roof, a heavy drapery of crimson — the 
aisles held up by blazing and innumerable pillars, sometimes 
swept by the wind till they stood in still and naked redness, while 
the eye could ^ see far into their depths, and again covered and 
wreathed and laved in everchanging billows of flame. We want 
an American Tempestaor '' Savage Rosa," to '* wreak" such pic- 
tures on canvass ; and perhaps the first step to it would be the 
painting of the foliage of an American autumn. These glorious 
wonders are peculiarities of our country ; why should they not 
breed a peculiar school of eff'ect and color ? 

Among the London news which has seasoned our breakfasts 
of late, I hear, pretty authentically, that Campbell is coming to 
look up his muse on the Susquehannah. He is at present writ- 
ing the life of Petrarch, and superintending the new edition of his 
works, (to be illustrated in the style of Rogers's,) and, between 
whiles, projecting a new poem ; and, my letters say, is likely to 
find the way, little known to poets, from the Temple of Fame to 
the Temple of Mammon. One would think it were scarce decent 
for Campbell to die without seeing Wyoming. I trust he will 
not. What would I not give to get upon a raft with him, and 
float down the Susquehannah a hundred miles, to the scene of his 
Gertrude, watching his fine face while the real displaced the 
ideal valley of his imagination. I think it would trouble him. 



118 LETTER XIIL 



Probably in the warmth of composition and the famiharity of 
years, the imaginary scene has become enamelled and sunk into 
his mind, and it would remain the home of his poem, after Wyo- 
ming itself had made a distinct impression on his memory. They 
would be two places — not one. He wrote it with some valley of 
his own land in his mind's eye, and grey Scotland and sunny and 
verdant Pennsylvania will scarce blend. But he will be welcome. 
Oh, how welcome ! America would rise up to Campbell. He 
has been the bard of freedom, generous and chivalric in all his 
strains ; and, nation of merchants as we are, I am mistaken if the 
string he has most played is not the master- chord of our national 
character. The enthusiasm of no people on earth is so easily 
awoke, and Campbell is the poet of enthusiam. The school-boys 
have him by heart, and what lives upon their lips will live and 
be loved forever. 

It would be a fine thing, I have often thought, dear Doctor, if 
every English author would be at the pains to reap his laurels in 
this country. If they could overcome their indignation at our 
disgraceful robbery of their copyrights, and come among the 
people who read them for the love they bear them— read them 
as they are not read in England, without prejudice or favor, per- 
sonal or political — it would be more like taking a peep at poster- 
ity than they think. In what is the judgment of posterity better 
than that of contemporaries ? Simply in that the author is seen 
from a distance — his personal qualities lost to the eye, and his 
literary stature seen in proper relief and proportion. We know 
nothing of the degrading rivalries and difficulties of his first ef- 
forts, or, if we do, we do not realize them, never having known 
him till success sent his name over the water. His reputation is 



JUSTICE TO AUTHORS. 119 



a Minerva to us — sprung full-grown to our knowledge. We 
praise him, if we like liim, with the spirit in which we criticise an 
author of an another age — with no possible private bias. Wit- 
ness the critiques upon Bulwer in this country, compared with 
those of his countrymen. What review has ever given him a 
tithe of his deservings in England ? Their cold acknowledgment 
of his merits reminds one of Enobarbus's civility ta Menas : 

" Sir ! I have praised you 
When you have well deserved ten times as much 
As I have said you did I" 

I need not, to you, dear Doctor, enlarge upon the benefits, politi- 
cal and social, to both countries, which would follow the mutual 
good- will of our authors. We shall never have theirs while we 
plunder them so barefacedly as now, and I trust in Heaven we 
shall, some time or other, see men in Congress who will go 
deeper for their opinions than the circular of a pirating book- 
seller. 

I wish you to send me a copy of Dawes's poems when they ap- 
pear. I have long thought he was one of the unappreciated ; 
but I see that his fine play of Athanasia is making a stir among 
the paragraphers. Rufus Dawes is a poet, if God ever created 
one, and he lives his vocation as well as imagines it. I hope he 
will shufile off the heavenward end of his mortal coil under the 
cool shades of my Omega. He is our Coleridge, and his talk 
should have reverent listeners. I have seldom been more pleased 
at a change in the literary kaleidoscope, than at his awakening 
popularity, and I pray you, blow what breath you have into his 



120 LETTER XIII. 



new-spread sail. Crancli, the artist, who lived with me in 
Italy, (a beautiful scholar in the art, whose hand is fast over- 
taking his head,) has, I see by the papers, made a capital 
sketch of him. Do you know whether it is to be engraved for 
the book ? 

Ossian represents the ghosts of his heroes lamenting that they 
had not had their fame, and it is a pity, I think, that we had not 
some literary apostle to tell us, from the temple of our Athens, 
who are the unknown great. Certain it is, they often live among 
us, and achieve their greatness unrecognized. How profoundly 
dull was England to the merits of Charles Lamb till he died ! 
Yet he was a fine illustration of my remark just now. America 
was posterity to him. The writings of all our young authors 
were tinctured with imitation of his style, when, in England, (as I 
personally know, ) it was difficult to light upon a person who had 
read his Elia. Truly '' the root of a great name is in the dead 
body." There is Walter Savage Landor, whose Imaginary Con- 
versations contain more of the virgin ore of thought than any 
six modern English writers together, and how many persons in 
any literary circle know whether he is alive or dead — an author 
of Queen Elizabeth's time or Queen Victoria's ? He is a man of 
fortune, and has bought Boccacio's garden at Fiesole, and there, 
upon the classic Africus, he is tranquilly achieving his renown, 
and it will be unburied, and acknowledged when he is dead. 
Travellers will make pilgrimages to the spot where Boccacio and 
Landor have lived, and wonder that they did not mark while it 
Avas done — this piling of Ossa on Pelion. 

By the way, Mr. Landor has tied me to the tail of his immor- 
tality, for an offence most innocently committed ; and I trust his 



SAVAGE LANDOR. 121 



biograplier will either let me slip off at ''Letlie's wliarf," by ex- 
purgating the book of me, or do me justice in a note. When 1 
was in Florence, I was indebted to him for much kind attention 
and hospitahty; and I considered it one of the highest of 
my good fortunes abroad, to go to Fiesole, and dine in the scene 
of the Decameron with an author who would, I thought, live as 
long as Boccacio. Mr. Landor has a choice collection of paint- 
ings, and at parting he presented me with a beautiful picture by 
Cuyp, which I had particularly admired, and gave me some of 
my most valuable letters to England, v/here I v/as then going. 
I mention it to show the terms on which we separated. While 
with him on my last visit, I had expressed a wish that the philo- 
sophical conversations in his books were separated from the polit- 
ical, and republished in a cheap form in America ; and the 
following morning, before daylight, his servant knocked at the 
door of my lodgings, with a package of eight or ten octavo 
volumes, and as much manuscript, accompanied by a note from 
Mr. Landor, committing the whole to my discretion. These 
volumes, I should tell you, were interleaved and interlined very 
elaborately, and having kept him company under his olive-trees, 
were in rather a dilapidated condition. How to add such a bulk 
of precious stuff to my baggage, I did not knov/. I was at the 
moment of starting, and it was very clear that even if the cus- 
tom-house officers took no exception to them, (thej are outlavfed 
through Italy for their political doctrines,) they would never sur- 
vive a rough journey over the Apennines and Alps. I did the 
best I could. I sent them with a note to Theodore Fay, who 
was then in Florence, requesting him to forward them to America 

VOL. I. 6 



122 LETTER XIII. 



by ship from Leghorn ; a commission which I knew that kindest 
and most honorable of men and poets would execute with the 
fidelity of an angel. So he did. He handed them to an Ameri- 
can straw-bonnet maker, (who, he had no reason to suppose, was 
the mahcious donkey he afterward proved,) and through him 
they were shipped and received in New York. I expected, at 
the time I left Florence, to make but a short stay in England, and 
sail in the same summer for America ; instead of which I re- 
mained in England two years, at the close of which appeared a 
new book of Mr. Landor's, Pericles and Aspasia. I took it up 
with delight, and read it through to the last chapter, where, of a 
sudden, the author jumps from the academy of Plato, clean over 
three thousand years, upon the shoulders of a false American, 
who had robbed him of invaluable manuscripts ! So there I go to 
posterity, astride the Finis of Pericles and Aspasia ! I had cor- 
responded occasionally with Mr. Landor, and in one of my letters 
had stated the fact, that the manuscripts had been committed to 
Mr. Miles to forward to America. He called, in consequence, at 
the shop of this person, who denied any knowledge of the books, 
leaving Mr. Landor to suppose that I had been either most care- 
less or most culpable in my management of his trust. The books 
had, however, after a brief stay in New York, followed me to 
London ; and. Fay and Mr. Landor happening there together, 
the explanation was made, and the books and manuscripts restored, 
miharmed, to the author. I was not long enough in London, af- 
terward, to know whether I was forgiven by Mr. Landor; but, as 
his book has not reached a second edition, I am still writhing in 
my purgatory of print. 



ERRCR UNCORRECTED. 123 



I have told you this long story, dear Doctor, because I am 
sometimes questioned on the subject by the literary people with 
whom you live, and hereafter I shall transfer them to your but- 
ton for the whole matter. But what a letter ! Write me two 
for it, and revenge yourself in the postage. 



LETTEE XIV. 

This is return month, dear Doctor, and, if it were only to be in 
fashion, you should have a quid pro quo for your four pages. 
October restores and returns ; your gay friends and invahds 
return to the city ; the birds and the planters return to the south ' 
the seed returns to the granary ; the brook at my feet is noisj 
again with its returned waters ; the leaves are returning to the 
earth ; and the heart, that has been out-of-doors while the sum- 
mer lasted, comes home from its wanderings by field and stream, 
and returns to feed on its harvest of new thoughts, past pleasures, 
and strengthened and confirmed afi'ections. At this time of the 
year, too, you expect a return (not of pasteboard) for yout 
*' visits ;'' but, as you have made me no visit, either friendly or 
professional, I owe you nothing. And that is the first consola- 
tion I have found for your shortcomings (or no-comings-at-all) to 
Glenmary. 

Now, consider my arms a-kimbo, if you please, wliile I ask you 
what you mean by calling Glenmary *' backwoods !" Faith, I 
wish it were more backwoods than it is ! Here be cards to be 
left, sir, morning calls to be made, body-coat soirees, and cere- 
mony enough to keep one's most holyday manners well aired. 



COUNTRY FASHIONABLENESS. 125 



The two miles' distance between me and Owego serves me for no 
exemption, for the village of Canewana, which is a mile nearer on 
the road, is equally within the latitude of silver forks ; and din- 
ners are given in both, which want no one of the belongings of 
Belgrave Square, save port- wine and powdered footmen. I think 
it is in one of Miss Austin's novels that a lady claims it to be a 
smart neighborhood in which she " dines with four-and-twenty 
families." If there are n#t more than half as many in Owego 
who give dinners, there are twice as many who ask to tea and 
give ice-cream and champaign. Then for the fashions, there is 
as liberal a sprinkling of French bonnets in the Owego church as 
in any village congregation in England. And for the shops — 
that subject is worthy of a sentence by itself. When I say there 
is no need to go to l^ew York for hat, boots, or coat, I mean that 
the Owego tradesmen (if you are capable of describing what you 
want) are capable of supplying you with the best and most 
modish of these articles. Call you that '' backwoods?" 

All this, I am free to confess, clashes with the heau ideal of the 

" Beatus ille qui procul^^ etc. 

I had myself imagined, and continued to imagine for some 
weeks after coming here,) that, so near the primeval wilderness, I 
might lay up my best coat and my ceremony in lavender, and 
live in fustian and a plain way. I looked forward to the delights 
of a broad straw hat, large shoes, baggy habiliments, and leave to 
sigh or whistle without offence ; and it seemed to me that it was the 
conclusion of a species of apprenticeship, and the beginning of 
my '* freedom." To be above no clean and honest employment 
of one's time ; to drive a pair of horses or a yoke of oxen with 



126 LETTER XIV. 



equal alacrity, and to be commented on for neither the one nor 
the other ; to have none but wholesome farming cares, and work 
with nature and honest yeomen, and be quite clear of mortifica- 
tions, envies, advice, remonstrance, coldness, misapprehensions, 
and etiquettes ; this is what I, like most persons who '' forswear 
the full tide of the world," looked upon as the blessed promise 
of retirement. But, alas ! wherever there is a butcher's shop 
and a post-office, an apothecary and «t blacksmith, an '' Arcade" 
and a milliner — wherever the conveniences of life are, in short — 
there has already arrived the Procrustes of opinion. Men's eyes 
will look on you and bring you to judgment, and unless you 
would live on wild meat and corn-bread in the wilderness, with 
neither friend nor helper, you must give in to a compromise — yield 
half at least of your independence, and take it back in common- 
place comfort. This is very every-day wisdom to those who 
know it ; but you are as likely as any man in the world to have 
sat with your feet over the fire, and fancied yourself on a wild 
horse in the prairie, with nothing to distinguish you from the 
warlike Camanche, except capital wine in the cellar of your wig- 
wam, and the last new novel and play, which should reach this 
same wigwam — you have not exactly determined how ! Such 
" pyramises are goodly things," but they are built of the smoke 
of your cigar. 

This part of the country is not destitute of the chances of 
adventure, however, and twice in the year, at least, you may, if 
you choose, open a valve for our spirits. One half the popula- 
tion of the neighborhood is engaged in what is called lumbering^ 
and until the pine timber of the forest can be counted like the 
cedars of Labanon, this vocation will serve the uses of the mobs 



LIMBERING. 127 



of England, the revolufions of France, and the plots of Italy. I 
may add, the music and theatres of Austria and Prussia, the 
sensual indulgence of the Turk, and the intrigue of the Spaniard ; 
for there is, in every people under the sun, a superflu of spirits 
unconsumed by common occupation, which, if not turned adroitly 
or accidentally to some useful or harmless end, will expend its 
reckless energy in trouble and mischief. 

The preparations for the adventures of which I speak, though 
laborious, are often conducted like a frolic. The felling of the 
trees in mid -winter, the cutting of shingles, and the drawing 
out on the snow, are employments preferred by the young men 
to the tamer but less arduous work of the farm-yard ; and, in 
the temporary and uncomfortable shanties, deep in the woods, 
subsisting often on nothing but pork and whiskey, they find metal 
more attractive than village or fireside. The small streams 
emptying into the Susquehannah are innumerable, and, eight or 
ten miles back from the river, the arks are built, and the materials 
of the rafts collected, ready to launch with the first thaw. I live, 
myself, as you know, on one of these tributaries, a quarter of a 
mile from its junction. The Owaga trips along at the foot of my 
lawn, as private and untroubled, for the greater part of the year, 
as Virginia Water at Windsor ; but, as it swells in March, the 
noise of voices and hammering, coming out from the woods above, 
warns us of the approach of an ark ; and, at the rate of eight or 
ten miles an hour, the rude structure shoots by, floating high on 
the water, without its lading, (which it takes in at the village 
below,) and manned with a singing and saucy crew, who dodge 
the branches of the trees, and work their steering paddles with 
an adroitness and nonchalance which sufficiently shows the 



128 LETTER XIV. 



character of the class. The sudden bends which the river takes 
in describing my woody Omega, put their steersmanship to the test ; 
and; when the leaves are off the trees, it is a curious sight to see 
the bulky monsters, shining with new boards, whirling around - 
in the swift eddies, and, when caught by the current again, 
gliding off among the trees, like a singing and swearing phantom 
of an unfinished barn. 

At the village they take wheat and pork into the arks, load 
their rafts with plank and shingles, and wait for the return of the 
freshet. It is a fact you may not know, that, when a river is 
rising, the middle is the highest, and vice versa when falling^ — 
sufficiently proved by the experience of the raftsmen, who, if they 
start before the flow is at its top, can not keef) their crafts from 
the shore. A penthouse, barely sufficient for a man to stretch 
himself below, is raised on the deck, with a fire-place of earth 
and loose stone, and, with what provision they can afford, and 
plenty of whiskey, they shove out into the stream. Thence- 
forward it is vofjfue la gaUre ! They have nothing to do, all day, 
but abandon themselves to the current, sing and dance and take 
their turn at the steering oars ; and, when the sun sets, they look 
out for an eddy, and pull in to the shore. The stopping-places 
are not very numerous, and are well known to all who follow the 
trade ; and, as the river swarms with rafts, the getting to land, 
and making sure of a fastening, is a scene always of great com- 
petition, and often of desperate fighting. Whe/U all is settled for 
the night, however, and the fires are lit on the long range of the 
flotilla, the raftsmen get together over their whiskey and prov- 
ender, and tell the thousand stories of their escapes and accidents ; 
and, with the repetition of this, night after night, the whole 



RAFTSMEN OF THE SI SUUEHANNAH. 129 



rafting population, along the five hundred miles of the Susque- 
hannah, becomes partially acquainted, and forms a sympathetic 
corps, v/hose excitement and esiJiit might be roused to very 
dangerous uses. 

By daylight they are cast off and once more on the current, 
and in five or seven days they arrive at tide-water, where the 
crew is immediately discharged, and start, usually on foot, to fol- 
low the river home again. There are several places in the 
navigation which are dangerous, such as rapids and dam-sluices ; 
and, what with these, and the scenes at the eddies, and their 
pilgrimage through a thinly settled and wild country home again, 
they see enough of adventure to make them fireside heroes, and 
incapacitate them, (while their vigor lasts, at least,) for all the more 
quiet habits of the farmer. The consequence is easy to be seen. 
Agriculture is but partially followed throughout the country, 
and while these cheap facilities for transporting produce to the 
sea-board exists, those who are contented to stay at home, and 
cultivate the rich river-lands of the country, are sure of high 
prices and a ready reward for their labor. 

Moral. Come to the Susquehannah, and settle on a farm. 
You did not know what I was driving at, all this while ! 

The rafismen who *' follow the Delaware" (to use their own 
poetical expression) are said to be a much wilder class than those 
on the Susquehannah. In returning to Owego, by different 
routes, I have often fallen in with parties of both ; and certainly 
nothing could be more entertaining than to listen to their tales. 
In a couple of years the canal route on the Susquehannah will 
lay open this rich vein of the picturesque and amusing, and, as 
the tranquil boat glides peacefully along the river bank, the 



130 LETTER XIV. 



traveller will be surprised with tlie strange effect of these 
immense flotillas, with their many fires and wild people, lying in 
the glassy bends of the solitary stream ; the smoke stealing through 
the dark forest, and the confusion of. a hundred excited voices 
breaking the silence. In my trip down the river in the spring, I 
saw enough that was novel in this way to fill a new portfolio for . 
Bartlett, and I intend he shall raft it with me to salt water the 
next time he comes among us. 

How deUcious are these October noons ! They will soon chill, 
I am afraid, and I shall be obliged to give up my out-of-doors 
habits ; but I shall do it unwillingly. I have changed sides under 
the bridge, to sit with my feet in the sun, and I trust this warm 
corner will last me, till November at least. The odor of the 
dying leaves, and the song of the strengthening brook, are still 
sufficient allurements, ?ttid even your rheumatism (of which the 
Latin should be podagra) might safely keep me company till 
dinner. Adieu, dear Doctor ! write me a long account of Yestris 
and Matthews, (how you like them, I mean, for I know very well 
how I like them myself,) and thank me for turning over to you a 
new leaf of American romance. You are welcome to write a 
novel, and call it '' The Raftsman of the Susquehannah." 



LETTER XV. 

"When did I descend the Susquehannah on a raft?" Never, 
dear Doctor ! But I have descended it in a steamboat, and that 
may surprise you more. It is an m-navigable river, it is true ; 
and, it is true, too, that there are some twenty dams across it 
between Owego and Wiikesbarre ; yet, have I steamed it from 
Ovfego to Wyoming, one hundred and fifty miles in twelve hours 
— on the top of a freshet. The dams were deep under the water, 
and the river was as smooth as the Hudson. And now you will 
wonder how a steamer came, by fair means, at Owego. 

A year or two since, before there was a prospect of extending 
the Pennsylvania canal to this place, it became desirable to bring 
the coal of "the keystone state" to these southern counties by 
some cheaper conveyance than horse-teams. A friend of mine, 
living here, took it into his head that, as salmon and shad will 
ascend a fall of twenty feet in a river, the propulsive energy of 
their tails might possibly furnish a hint for a steamer that would 
shoot up dams and rapids. The suggestion was made to a Con- 
necticut man, who, of course, undertook it. He would have been 
less than a Yankee if he had not tried. The product of his 
ingenuity was the steamboat '' Susquehannah," drawing but 



132 LETTER XV. 



dgliteen inches ; and, besides her side-paddks, having an im- 
mense wheel in the stern, which, playing in the slack water of the 
boat, would drive her up Niagara, if she would but hold together. 
The principal weight of her machinery hung upon two wooden 
arches running fore and aft, and altogether she was a neat 
piece of contrivance, and promised fairly to answer the purpose. 

I think the '' Susquehannah" had made three trips when she 
broke a shaft, and was laid up ; and, what with one delay and 
another, the canal was half completed between her two havens 
before the experiment had fairly succeeded. A month or two 
since, the proprietors determined to run her down the river for 
the purpose of selling her, and I was invited, among others, to 
join in the trip. 

The only offices professionally filled on board, were those of 
the engineer and pilot. Captain, mate, firemen, steward, cook, 
and chambermaid, were represented en amateur, by gentlemen 
passengers. We rang the bell at the starting hour with the zeal 
usually displayed in that department^ and, by the assistance of 
the current, got off in the usual style of a steamboat departure, 
wanting only the newsboys and pickpockets. With a stream 
running at five knots, and paddles calculated to mount a cascade, 
we could not fail to take the river in gallant style, and before we 
had regulated our wood-piles and pantry, we were backing water 
at Athens, twenty miles on our way. 

Navigating the Susquehannah is very much like dancing " the 
cheat.'' You are always making straight up to a mountain, with 
no apparent possibility of escaping contact with it, and it is an 
even chance, up to the last moment, which side of it you are to 
"hassez with the current. Meantime the sun seems capering 



SITES FOR VILLAS. 133 



about to all points of tlie compass, the shadows falling in every 
possible direction, and, north, south, east, and west, changing 
places with the familiarity of a masquerade. The blindness of 
the river's course is increased by the innumerable small islands 
in its bosom, whose tall elms and close-set willows meet half- 
way those from either shore ; and, the current very often dividing 
above them, it takes an old voyager to choose between the 
shaded alleys, by either of which, you would think, Arethusa 
migh have eluded her lover. 

My own mental occupation, as we ghded on, was the distribu- 
tion of white villas along the shore, on spots where Nature seemed 
to have arranged the ground for their reception. I saw thousands 
Df sites where the lawns were made, the terraces defined and 
levelled, the groves tastefully clumped, the ancient trees ready 
with their broad shadows, the approaches to the water laid out, 
the banks sloped, and, in everything, the labor of art seemingly 
all anticipated by Nature. I grew tired of exclaiming, to the 
friend who was beside me, '' What an exquisite site for a villa ! 
What a sweet spot for a cottage !" If I had had the power to 
people the Susquehannah by the wave of a wand, from those I 
know capable of appreciating its beauty, what a paradise I could 
have spread out between my own home and Wyoming ! It 
was pleasant to knovv^, that, by changes scarcely less than magical, 
these lovely banks will soon be amply seen and admired, and 
probably as rapidly seized upon and inhabited by persons of taste. 
The gangs of laborers at the foot of every steep cliff, doing the 
first rough work of the canal, gave promise of a speedy change in 
the aspect of this almost unknown river. 

It was sometimes ticklish steerinn; amon<x the rafts and arks 



134 LETTER XV. 



with which the river was thronged, and we never passed one 
without getting the raftsman's rude hail. One of them furnished 
my vocabulary with a new measure of speed. He stood at the 
stern oar of a shingle raft, gaping at us, open-mouthed, as we 
came down upon them. '^ Wal !" said he, as we shot past, 
** you're going a good hickory y mister !" It was amusing, again, 
to run suddenly round a point and come upon a raft with a 
minute's warning ; the voyagers as little expecting an intrusion 
upon their privacy, as a retired student to be unroofed in a Lon- 
don garret. The different modes of expressing surprise became 
at last quite a study to me, yet total indifference was not infre- 
quent ; and there were some, who, I think, would not have risen 
from their elbows if the steamer had flown bodily over them. 

We passed the Falls of Wyalusing (most musical of Indian 
names) and Buttermilk Falls, both cascades worthy of being 
known and sung, and twilight overtook us some two hours from 
Wyoming. We had no lights on board, and the engineer was 
unwilling to run in the dark ; so, our pilot being an old raftsman, 
we put into the first '' eddy," and moored for the night. These 
eddies, by the way, would not easily be found by a stranger, but 
to the practiced navigators of the river they are all numbered 
and named like harbors on a coast. The strong current, in the 
direct force of which the clumsy raft would find it impossible to 
come to, and moor, is at these places turned back by some pro- 
jection of the shore, or ledge at the bottom, and a pool of still 
water is formed, in which the craft may He secure for the night. 
The lumbermen give a cheer when they have steered successfully 
in, and, springing joyfully ashore, drive their stakes, eat, dance, 
quarrel, and sleep ; and many a good tale is told of rafts shly 



RAFT-RUNNING. I35 



unmoored, and set adrift at midnight by parties from the eddies 
above, and of the consequent adventures of running in the dark. 
We had on board two gentlemen who had earned an indepen- 
dence in this rough vocation, and their stories, told laughingly 
against each other, developed well the expedient and hazard of 
the vocation. One of theip had once been mischievously cut 
adrift by the owner of a rival cargo, when moored in an eddy 
with an ark-load of grain. The article was scarce and high in 
the markets below, and he had gone to sleep securely under his 
penthouse, and was dreaming of his profits, when he suddenly 
awoke with a shock, and discovered that he was high and dry 
upon a sedgy island some miles below his moorings. The freshet 
was falling fast, and, soon after daylight, his competitor for the 
market drifted past with a laugh, and confidently shouted out a 
good-bye till another voyage. The triumphant ark-master floated 
on all day, moored again at night, and arrived safely at tide- 
water, where the first object that struck his sight was the ark 
he had left in the sedges, its freight sold, its owner preparing to 
return home, and the market of course forestalled ! The " Roland 
for his Oliver" had, with incredible exertion, dug a canal for his 
ark, launched her on the slime, and, by risking the night-running, 
passed him unobserved, and gained a day — a feat as illustrative 
of the American genius for emergency as any on record. 

It was a still, starlight night, and the river was laced with the 
long reflections of the raft-fires, while the softened songs of the 
men over their evening carouse, came to us along the smooth 
water with the eff*ect of far better music. What with '' wooding*' 
at two or three places, however, and what with the excitement 
of the day, we were too fatigued to give more than a glance and 



136 LE riER XV. 



a passing note of admiralion to the beauty of the scene, and the 
next question was, how to come by Sancho's '' blessed invention 
of sleep." We had been detained at the wooding-places, and 
had made no calculation to lie by, a night. There were no beds 
on board, and not half room enough in the little cabin to distrib- 
ute, to each passenger, six feet by two of floor. The shore was 
wild, and not a friendly lamp glimmering on the hills ; but the 
pilot at last recollected having once been to a house, a mile or 
two back from the river, and, with the diminished remainder of 
our provender as a pis aller in case of finding no supper in -our 
forage, we started in search. We stumbled and scrambled, and 
delivered our benisoipis to rock and brier, till I would fain have 
lodged with Trinculo '' under a moon-calf's gaberdine ;" but, by- 
and-by, our leader fell upon a track, and a light soon after glim- 
mered before us. We approached through cleared fields, and, 
without the-^onsent of the -farmer's dog, to w^hose wishes on the 
subject we were compelled to do violence, the blaze of a huge 
fire (it was a chilly night of spring) soon bettered our resignation. 
A Stout, white-headed fellow of twenty-eight or thirty, barefooted, 
sat in a cradle, see-sawing before the fire, and, without rising 
when we entered, or expressing the slightest surprise at our visit, 
he replied, to our questions, that he was the father of some twelve 
sorrel and barefoot copies of himself huddled into the corner, 
that 'Hhe woman" was his wife, and that we were welcome '' to 

. stay." Upon this, the '' woman" for the first time looked at us, 
counted us with the nods of her head, and disappeared with the 
only candle. 

When his wife reappeared, the burly farmer extracted himself 

^ with some difficulty from the cradle, and, without a word passing 



CHANCE BEDFELLOW. 137 



between them, entered upon his office as chamberlain. We fol- 
lo^wed him up stairs, where we were agreeably surprised to find 
three very presentable beds ; and, as I happened to be the last 
and fifth, I fehcitated myself on the good chance of sleeping 
alone, ^^ clapped into my prayers," as was recommended to Mas- 
ter Barnardine, and was asleep before the candle-snuif. I should 
have said that mine was a ^' single bed,'' in a sort of a closet par- 
titioned off from the main chamber. 

How long I had travelled in dream-land I have no means of 
knowing, but I was awoke by a touch on the shoulder, and the 
information that I must make room for a bedfellow. It was a 
soft-voiced young gentleman, as well as I could perceive, with 
his collar turned down, and a book under his arm. Without 
very clearly remembering where I was, I represented to my pro- 
posed friend that I occupied as nearly as possible the whole of 
the bed— to say nothing of a foot, over which he might see (the 
foot^ by looking where it outreached the coverlet. It was a very 
short bed, indeed, 

" It was large enough for me till you came," said the stranger^ 
modestly. 

" Then I am the intruder ?" I asked. 

"■ No intrusion if you will share with me," he said ; " but as 
this is my bed, and I have no resource but the kitchen-fire, per- 
haps you will let me in." 

There was no resisting his tone of good humor, and my friend, 
by this time, having prepared himself to take up as little room as 
possible, I consented that he should blow out the candle and get 
under the blanket. The argument and the effort of making my- 
self small as he crept in, had partially waked me, and before my 



138 LETTER XV. 



ears were sealed up again, I learned that my companion, who 
proved rather talkative, was the village schoolmaster. He taught 
for twelve dollars a month and his board — taking the latter a 
week at a time with the different famihes to which his pupils 
belonged. For the present week he was quartered upon our 
host, and, having been out visiting, past the usual hour of bedtime, 
he was not aware of the arrival of strangers till he found me on 
his pillow^ 

I went to sleep, admiring the amiable temper of my new friend 
under the circumstances, but awoke presently with a sense of 
suffocation. The schoolmaster was fast asleep, but his arms 
were clasped tightly round my throat. I disengaged them with- 
out waking him, and composed myself again. 

Once more I awoke half suffocated. My friend's arms had 
found their way again around my neck, and, though evidently 
fast asleep, he was drawing me to him with a clasp I found it 
difficult to unloose. I shook him broad awake, and begged 
him to take notice that he was sleeping with a perfect stranger. 
He seemed very much annoyed at having disturbed me, made 
twenty apologies, and, turning his back, soon fell asleep. I 
followed his example, wishing him a new turn to his dream. 

A third time I sprang up choking from the pillow, drawing 
my companion fairly on end with me. I could stand it no longer. 
Even when half aroused he could hardly be persuaded to let go 
his hold of my neck. I jumped out of bed, and flung open the 
window for a little air. The moon had risen, and the night was 
exquisitely fine. A brawling brook ran under the window, and, 
after a minute or two, being thoroughly awaked, I looked at my 
watch in the moonlight, and found it wanted but an hour or two 



WYOMING. 139 



of morning. Afraid to risk my throat again, and remembering 
that I could not fairly quarrel with my friend, who had undoubt- 
edly a right to embrace, after his own fashion, any intruder who 
ventured into his proper bed, I went down stairs, and raked open 
the embers of the kitchen fire, which served me for less afiec- 
tionate company till dawn. How and where he could have 
acquired^, his caressing habits, were subjects upon which I specu- 
lated unsatisfactorily over the coals. 

My companions were called up at sunrise by the landlord, and, 
as we were paying for our lodging, the schoolmaster came down 
to see us off. I was less surprised when I came to look at him 
by daylight. It was a fair, delicate boy of sixteen, whose slen- 
der health had probably turned his attention to books, and who, 
perhaps, had never slept away from his mother till he went 
abroad to teach school. Quite satisfied with one experiment of 
filling the maternal relation, I wished him a less refractory bed- 
fellow, and we hastened on board. 

The rafts were under weigh before us, and the tortoise had 
overtaken the hare, for we passed several that we had passed higher 
up, and did not fail to get a jeer for our sluggishness. An hour 
or two brought us to Wilkesbarre, an excellent hotel, good break- 
fast, and new and kind friends ; and so ended my trip on the 
Susquehannah. Some other time I will tell you how beautiful is 
the valley of Wyoming, which I have since seen in the holyday 
colors of October. Thereby hangs a tale, too, worth telling and 
hearing ; and, as a promise is good parting stufi*, adieu ! 



LETTER XVI. 

The books and the music came safe to hand, dear Doctor, but 
I trust we are not to stand upon quid-pro- quosities. The barrel 
of buckwheat not only cost me nothing, but I have had my uses of 
it in the raising, and can no more look upon its value, than upon 
a flower which I pluck to smell, and give away when it is faded. 
I have sold some of my crops for the oddity of the sensation ; 
rmd I assure you it is very much like being paid for dancing 
when the ball is over. Why, consider the offices this very buck- 
wheat has performed ! There was the trust in Providence, in the 
purchase of the seed — a sermon. There were the exercise and 
health in ploughing, harrowing, and sowing — prescription and 
pill. There was the performance of the grain, its sprouting, its 
flowering, its earing, and its ripening — a great deal more amus- 
ing than di play. Then there were the harvesting, thrashing, fan- 
ning, and grinding — a sort of pastoral collection, publication, and 
purgation by criticism. Now suppose your clergyman, your phy- 
sician, your favorite theatrical corps, your publislier, printer, and 
critic, thrashed and sold in bags for six shillings a bushel ! I as- 
sure you the cases are similar, except that the buckwheat makes 
probably the more savory cake. 



MAGAZINE-WRITERS. • 141 



The new magazine was welcome ; the more, that it brought 
back to me m j own days of rash adventure in such tickhsh craft, 
with a pleasant sense of deliverance from its risk and toil. The 
imprint of *^ No. I, Vol. I,'' reads to me like a bond for the un- 
reserved abandonment of time and soul. Truly, youth is wisely 
provided with little forethought, and much hope. What child 
would learn the alphabet, if he could see at a glance the toil that 
lies behind it ? I look upon the fresh type and read the san- 
guine prospectus of this new-born Monthly, and remember, with 
astonishment, the thoughtlessness with which, years ago, I 
launched, in the same gay colors, such a venture on the wave. It 
is a voyage that requires plentiful stores, much experience of the 
deeps and shallows of the literary seas, and a hand at every hal- 
yard ; yet, to abandon my simile, I proposed to be publisher and 
editor, critic and contributor ; and I soon found that I might as 
well have added reader to my manifold offices. No one who has 
not tried this vocation can have any idea of the difficulty of pro- 
curing the light, yet condensed — the fragmented, yet finished — 
the good-tempered and gentlemanly, yet high-seasoned and dash- 
ing papers necessary to a periodical. A man who can write 
them, can, in our country, put himself to a more profitable use — 
••and does. The best magazine -writer living, in my opinion, is Ed- 
ward Everett ; and he governs a State with the same time and 
attention which, in England, perhaps, would be cramped to con- 
tributing to a review. Calhoun might write vfonderfully fine 
articles. Legare, of Charleston, has the right talent, with the 
learning. Crittenden, of the Senate, I should think, might have 
written the most brilliant satirical papers. But these, and others 
like them, are men the country and their own ambition can not 



142 LETTER XVI. 



spare. There ^ is a younger class of writers, however ; and 
though the greater number of these, too, fill responsible stations 
in society, separate from general literature, they might be in- 
duced, probably, were the remuneration adequate, to lend their 
support to a periodical "till the flower of their fame shall be 
more blown." Among them are Felton and Longfellow, both 
professors at Cambridge ; and Sumner and Henry Cleaveland, 
lawyers of Boston — a knot of writers who sometimes don the 
cumbrous armor of the Korth American Review, but who would 
show to more advantage in the lighter harness of the monthlies. 
I could name twenty more, to any one interested to know them, 
all valuable allies to a periodical ; but no literary man questions 
that. We have in our country talent enough, if there were the 
skill and means to put it judiciously together. 

Coleridge and others have mourned over the age of reviews, as 
the downfall and desecration of authorship ; but I am inclined to 
think authors gain more than they lose by the facility of criticism. 
What chance has a book on a shelf, waiting to be called for by 
the purchaser uninformed of its merits, to one whose beauties 
and defects have been canvassed by these Mercury- wmged mes- 
sengers, volant and universal as the quickest news of the hour ? 
How slow and unsympathetic must have been the progress of a 
reputation, when the judicious admirer of a new book could but 
read and put it by, expressing his delight, at farthest, to his 
immediate friend or literary correspondent ? The apprehensive 
and honest readers of a book are never many ; but, in our days, 
if it reach but one of these, what is the common outlet of his en- 
thusiasm? Why, a trumpet-tongued review, that makes an 
entire people partakers of his appreciation, in the wax and wane 



LITERARY FAIRNESS. 143 



of a single moon. Greedily as all men and women devour books, 
ninety-nine in a hundred require them to be first cut up — ^lia- 
ble else, like children at their meals, to swallow the wrong mor- 
sel. '■ Yet, like children, still, when the good is pointed out, they 
digest it as well as another; and so is diffused an understanding, 
as well as "prompt admiration of the author. For myself, I am 
free to confess, I am one of those who like to take the first taste 
of an author in a good review. I look upon the reviewer as a 
sensible friend, who came before me to the feast, and recommends 
to me the dish that has most pleased him. There is a fellowship 
in agreeing that it is good. I have often wished there were a 
Washington among the critics — some one upon whose judgment, 
freedom from paltry motives, generosity and fairness, I could pin 
my faith blindly and implicitly. Dilke, of the London Athenae- 
um, is the nearest approach to this character, and a good proof of 
it is an order frequently given, (a London publisher informed me,) 
by country gentlemen : '' Send me everything the Athen^um 
praises." Though a man of letters, Dilke is not an author, and, 
by the way, dear Doctor, I think in that lies the best qualifica- 
tion, if not the only chance for the impartiahty of the critic. 
How few authors are capable of praising a book by which their 
own is thrown into shadow. " Why does Plato never mention 
Zenophon ? and why does Zenophon inveigh against Plato ?" 

But I think there is less to fear from jealousy, than from the 
want of sympathy between writers on different subjects, or in 
different styles. D'Israeli the elder, from whom I have just 
quoted, sounds the depth of this matter with the very plummet 
of truth. " Every man of genius has a manner of his OAvn ; a 
mode of thinking and a habit of style ; and usually decides on a 



144 LETTER XVI. 



work as it appro ximates or varies from his own. When one great 
author depreciates another/ it has often no worse source than his 
own taste. The witty Cowley despised the natural Chaucer ; 
the cold, classical Boileau, the rough subHmity of Crebillon ; the 
refining Marivaux, the familiar Moliere. The deficient sympathy 
in these men of genius, for modes of feeling opposite to their own, 
was the real cause of their opinions ; and thus it happens that 
even superior genius is so often liable to be unjust and false in its 
decisions." 

Apropos of English periodicals, we get them now almost wet 
fi'om the press, and they seem far off and foreign no longer. 
But there is one (to me) melancholy note in the p^an with which 
the Great Western was welcomed. In literature toe are no longer 
a distinct nation. The triumph of Atlantic steam navigation has 
driven the smaller drop into the larger, and London has become 
the centre. Farewell nationality ! The English language now 
marks the limits of a new literary empire, and America is a 
suburb. Our themes, our resources, the disappearing savage, 
and the retiring wilderness, the free thought, and the action as 
free, the spirit of daring innovation, and the irreverent question 
of usage, the picturesque mixture of many nations in an equal 
home, the feeling of expanse, of unsubserviency, of distance from 
time-hallowed authority and prejudice-— all the elements which 
were working gradually but gloriously together to make us a 
nation by ourselves, have, in this approximation of shores, either 
perished for our using, or slipped within the clutch of England. 
What effect the now near and jealous criticism of that country 
will have upon our politics, :s a deeper question ; but our literature 
is subsidized at a blow. Hitherto we have been to them a 



AMERICAN REHEARSAL OF FAME. 145 



strange country ; the few books that reached them they ciiticised 
with compHmentary jealousy, or with the courtesy due to a 
stranger; while our themes and our pohtical structures were 
looked on with the advantage of distance, undemeaned by ac- 
quaintance with sources or familiarity with details. While all our 
material is thrown open to English authors, we gain nothing in 
exchange, for, with the instinct of descendants, we have continued 
to look back to our fathers, and our conversance with the wells 
of English literature was as complete as their own. 

The young American author is the principal sufferer by the 
change. Imagine an actor compelled to make a dthut without 
rehearsal, and you get a faint shadow of v/hat he has lost. It was 
some advantage, let me tell you, dear Doctor, to have run the 
gauntlet of criticism in America before being heard of in Eng- 
land. When Irving and Cooper first appeared as authors abroad, 
they sprung to sight like Minerva, full-grown. They had seen 
themselves in print, had reflected and improved upon private and 
public criticism, and were made aware of their faults before they 
were irrecoverably committed on this higher theatre. Keats 
died of a rebuke to his puerilities, which, had it been admin- 
istered here, would have been borne up against, with the hope of 
higher appeal and new effort, He might have been the son of 
an American apothecary, and never be told by an English critic 
to *' return to his gallipots." The Atlantic was, hitherto, a 
friendly Lethe, in which the sins of youth (so heavily and un- 
justly visited on aspirants to fame) were washed out and for- 
gotten, The American, ''licked into shape" by the efficient 
tongues of envy and jealousy at home, stepped ashore in England, 
wary and guarded against himself and others. The book by 

VOL, T. 7 



146 LETTER XVI. 



which he had made himself known, might have been the suc- 
cessful effort after twenty failures, and it met with the indulgence 
of a first. The cloud of his failures, the remembrance of his 
degradations by ridicule were left behind. His practiced skill 
was measured by other^s beginnings. 

We suffer, too, in our social position, in England. We have 
sunk from the stranger to the suburban or provincial. In a year 
or two every feature and detail of our country will be as well 
known to EngUsh society as those of Margate and Brighton. 
Our similarity to themselves in most things will not add to their 
respect for us. We shall have the second place accorded to the 
jidigenous society of well-known places of resort or travel, and 
to be an American will be, in England, like being a Maltese or an 
East Indian — every way inferior, in short, to a metropolitan in 
London. 

You see, my dear Doctor, how I make my correspondence 
with you serve as a trap for my stray thoughts ; and you will 
say, that in this letter I have caught some that might as well 
have escaped. But as the immortal Jack *' turned'^ even '' dis- 
eases to commodity,'' and as '' la superiorite est une infirmite 
mciale^^ perhaps you will tolerate my dullness, or consider it a 
polite avoidance of your envy. Write me better or worse, how- 
ever, and I will shape a welcome to it. 



LETTER XVII. 

Do you remember, my dear Doctor, in one of the Elizabethan 
dramas, (I forget which,) the description of the contention 
between the nightingale and the page's lute ? Did you ever 
remark how a bird, sitting silent in a tree, will trill out, at the 
first note which breaks the stillness, as if it had waited for that 
signal to begin ? Have you noticed the emulation of pigs in a 
pasture — how the galloping by of a horse in the road sets them 
off for a race to the limits of the cross-fence. 

I have been sitting here with my feet upon the autumn leaves, 
portfolio on knee, for an hour. The shadow of the bridge cuts 
a line across my breast, leaving my thinking machinery in shad- 
ow, while the farmer portion of me mellows in the sun ; the air 
is as still as if we had suddenly ceased to hear the growing of 
the grain, and the brook runs leaf-shod over the pebbles, like a 
child frightened by the silence into a whisper. You would say 
this was the very mark and fashion of an hour for the silent 
sympathy of letter- writing. Yet here have I sat with the temp- 
tation of an unblotted sheet before me, and my heart and 
thoughts full and ready ; and, by my steady gazing in the brook, 
vou would fancy I had taken the gun's function to myself, and 



148 LETTER XVII. 



was sitting idle to shine. All at once from the open window of 
the cottage poured a passionate outbreak of Beethoven's music, 
(played by the beloved hand,) and with a kind of fear that I 
should overtake it, and a resistless desire (which, I dare say, you 
have felt in hearing music) to appropriate such angelic utterance 
to the expression of my own feelings, I forthwith started into a 
scribble, and have filled my first page as you see — without 
drawing nib. If turning over the leaf break not the charm, you 
are likely to have an answer writ to your last before the shadow 
on my breast creep two buttons downward. 

Your letter was short, and if this were not the commencement 
of a new score, I should complain of it more gravely. Writing 
so soon after we had parted, you might claim that you had little 
to say ; yet I thought (over that broiled oyster after the play) 
that your voluble discourse would '' put a girdle round the 
earth" in less time than Ariel. I listened to you as a child looks 
at the river, wondering when it would all run by. Yet that 
might be partly disuse in listening — for I have grown rustic with 
a year's seclusion. I found it in other things. My feet swelled 
with walking on the pavement. My eyes were giddy with the 
multitude of people. My mouth became parched with the ex- 
citement of greetings and surprises, and the raising of my tones 
to the metropolitan pitch. I was nearly exhausted, by mid- day, 
with the ''infinite deal cf nothing." Homoeopathy alone can 
explain why "Patter versus Clatter" did not finish me quite. 

Ah ! how admirably Charles Matthews played that night ! 
The papers have well named him the Mercury of comedians. 
His playing will probably create a new school of iplaj-writing — 
something like what he has aimed at (without sufficient study) in 



WANE OF DANDIES. 149 



the pieces he has written for himself. The finest thing 1 could 
imagine, in the dramatic way, would be a partnership (a la Beau- 
mont and Fletcher) between the stage knowledge and comic 
talent of Matthews, and the penetrating, natural, and observant 
humor of Boz. The true '' humor of the time'' has scarcely 
been reached, on the stage, since Moliere ; and, it seems to me, 
that a union of the talents of these two men (both very young) 
might bring about a new era in high comedy. Matthews has 
the advantage of having been, from boyhood, conversant with the 
most polished society. He was taken to Italy when a boy, by 
one of the most munificent and gay noblemen of England, an 
intimate of his father, and, if I have been rightly informed, was 
his companion for several years of foreign residence and travel. 
I remember meeting him at a dinner-party in London three or 
four years since, when probably he had never thought seriously 
of the stage. Yet, at that time, it was remarked by the person 
who sat next me, that a better actor than his father was spoiled in 
the son. He was making no particular effort at humor on the 
occasion to which I refer ; but the servants, including a fat butler 
of remarkable gravity, were forced to ask permission to leave the 
room — their laughter becoming uncontrollable. He would doubt- 
less have doubled his profits in this country had he come as a 
single star ; but, I trust his success will still be sufficient to estab- 
lish him in an annual orbit — from east to west. 

One goes to the city with fresh eyes after a year's absence, 
and I was struck with one or two things, which, in their gradual 
wax or wane, you do not seem to have remarked. What Te 
Deum has been chanted, for example, over the almost complete 
disappearance of the dandies ? I saw but two while I was in 



150 LETTER XVIL 



New York, and in them it was Nature's caprice. They would 
have been dandies equally in fig-leaves or wampum. The era of 
(studiously) plain clothes arrived some years ago in England, 
where Count D'Orsay, and an occasional wanderer from Broad- 
way, are the only freshly-remembered apparitions of excessively 
dressed men ; and, slow as has been its advent to us, it is sooner 
come than was predicted. I feared, for one, that our European 
reputation, of being the most expensive and showy of nations, was 
based upon the natural extreme of our political character, and 
would last as long as the republic. I am afraid, still, that the 
ostentation once shown in dress is but turned into another channel, 
and that the equipages of New York more than supply the 
showiness abated in the costume. But even this is a step 
onward. Finery on the horse is better than finery on the owner. 
The caparison of an equipage is a more manly study than the 
toilet of the fine gentleman ; and possesses, besides, the advan- 
tage of being left properly to the saddler. On the whole, it 
struck me that the countenance of Broadway had lost a certain 
flimsy and tinsel character with which it used to impress me, and 
had, in a manner, grown hearty and unpretentious. I should 
be glad to know (and none can tell me better than yourself) 
whether this is the outer seeming of deeper changes in our 
character. Streets have expressive faces, and I have long marked 
and trusted them. It would be difficult to feel fantastic in the 
sumptuous gravity of Bond Street — as difficult to feel grave 
in the bright airiness of the Boulevard. In these two thorough- 
fares you are made to feel the distinctive qualities of England and 
France. What say you of the changed expression of Broadway ? 
Miss Martineau, of all travellers, has doubtless written the 



CRITICISMS OF MANNERS. 151 



most salutary book upon our manners, {malgre the womanish 
pique which distorted her judgment of Everett and others,) but 
there is one reproach which she has recorded against ns, in which 
I have felt some patriotic glory, but which I am beginning to 
fear we deserve no longer. The text of her fault-finding is the 
Quixotic attentions of Americans to women in public conveyances, 
apropos of a gentleman's politeness who took an outside seat 
upon a coach to give a lady room for her feet. From what I 
could observe, in my late two or three days' travel, I think I 
could encourage Miss Marti neau to return to America with but a 
trifling risk of being too particularly attended to, even were she 
incognita and young. We owe this decadence of chivalry to Miss 
Martineau, I think it may be safely said. In a country where 
every person of common education reads every book of travels in 
which his manners are discussed, the most casual mention of a 
blemish, even by a less authority than Miss Martineau, acts as an 
instant cautery. I venture to say that a young lady could 
scarcely be found in the United States, who would not give you, 
on demand, a complete list of our national faults and foibles, as 
recorded by Hall, Hamilton, Trollope, and Martineau. Why, 
they form the common staple of conversation and jest ! Ay, and 
of speculation ! Hamilton's book was scarcely dry from the press 
before orders were made out to an immense extent for egg-cups 
and silver forks. Mrs. Trollope quite extinguished the trade in 
spit-boxes, and made fortunes for the finger-glass manufacturers ; 
and, Captain Marryat, I understand, is besieged in every city by 
the importers, to know upon what deficiency of table furniture he 
intends to be severe. It has been more than once suggested, 
(and his manners aided the idea,) that Hamilton was probably a 



152 LETTER XVIL 



travelling agent for the plated-fork manufactories of Birmingham. 
And a fair caveat to both readers and reviewers of futm^e books 
of travels, would be an mquiry touching their probable bearing 
on English manufactures. I would not be illiberal to Miss Marti- 
neau, but I would ask any candid person, whether the influx of 
thick shoes and cotton stockings, simultaneously with her arrival 
in this country, could have been entirely an unpremeditated 
coincidence ? 

We are indebted, I think, to the Astor House, for one of the 
pleasantest changes that I noticed while away — and I like it the 
better, that it is a departure from our general rule of imitating 
English habits too exclusively. You were with us there, and can 
bear witness to the refined class we met at the ladies' ordi- 
nary ; while the excellence of the table and service, and the 
prevalence of well-bred company, had drawn the most exclusive 
from their private parlors, and given to the daily society of the 
drawing-room the character of the gay and agreeable watering 
places of Germany. The solitary confinement of English hotels 
always seemed to me particularly unsuited to the position and 
wants of the traveller. Loneliness is no evil at home, where 
books and regular means of employment are at hand ; but, to be 
abandoned to four walls and a pormanteau, in -a strange city, of 
a rainy day, is what nothing but an Englishman would dream of 
calling comfortable. It was no small relief to us, on that drizzly 
and chilly autumn day which you remember, to descend to a 
magnificent drawing-room, filled with some fifty or a hundred 
well-bred people, and pass av/ay the hours as they would be 
passed under similar circumstances in a hospitable country-house 
in England. The beautiful architecture of the Astor apartments 



CEMETERIES. I53 



and the sumptuous elegance of the furniture and table service, 
make it in a measure a peculiarity of the house ; but the exam- 
ple is likely to be followed in other hotels and cities, and, I hope 
it will become a national habit, as in Germany, for strangers to 
meet at their meals and in the public rooms. Life seems to me 
too short for English exclusiveness in travel. 

I determined to come home by Wyoming, after you left us, 
and took the boat to Philadelphia accordingly. We passed two 
or three days in that clean and pleasant city, and, among other 
things, made an excursion to Laurel Hill — certainly the most 
bet^utiful cemetery in the world after the K'ecropolis of Scutari. 
Indeed, the spot is selected with something like Turkish feeling, 
for it seems as if it were intended to associate the visits, to the 
resting-places of the departed, more with our pleasures than our 
duties. The cemetery occupies a lofty promonotory above the 
Schuylkill, possessing the inequality of surface so favorable to 
the object, and shaded with pines and other ornamental trees of 
great age and beauty. The views down upon the river, and 
through the sombre glades and alleys of the burial-grounds, are 
unsurpassed for sweetness and repose. The elegance which 
marks everything Philadelphian, is shown already in the few 
monuments erected. An imposing gateway leads you in from 
the high road, and a freestone group, large as life, representing 
Old Mortality at work on an inscription, and Scott leaning upon 
a tombstone to watch his toil, faces the entrance. I noticed the 
area of one tomb enclosed by a chain of hearts, cast beautifully 
in iron. The whole was laid out in gravel- walks, and there was 
no grave without its flowers. I confess the spirit of this sweet 
spot affected me deeply ; and I look upon this, and Mount Auburn 



154 LETTER XYll, 



at Cambridge, as delightful indications of a purer growth in our 
national character than politics and money-getting. It is a real- 
life poetry, which reflects as much glory upon the age as the birth 
of a Homer. 

The sun has crept down to my paper, dear Doctor, and the 
shadow of the bridge falls cooler than is good for my rheuma- 
tism. I wish that the blessing of Ceres upon Ferdinand and 
Miranda, 

" Spring come to you at farthest. 
In the very end of harvest," 

might light on Glenmary. I enjoy winter when it comes, but its 
approach is altogether detestable. It is delightful to get home, 
however ; for, like Prospero, in the play I have just quoted, 
there is a " delicate Ariel," (content,) who only waits on me in 
solitude. You will carry out the allegory, and tell me I have 
Caliban too, but, to the rudeness of country monsters, I take as 
kindly as Trinculo. And now I must to the woods, and by the 
aid of these same '' ancient and fish-like '* monsters, transplant 
me a tree or two before sunset. Adieu. 



LETTEE XVIII. 

Our summer friends are flown, dear Doctor ; not a leaf on the 
dogwood worth watching, though its fluted leaves were the last. 
Still the cottage looks summery when the sun shines, for the fir- 
trees, which were half lost among the flaunting of the deciduous 
foliage, look out, green and unchanged, from the naked branches 
of the grove, with neither reproach for our neglect, nor boast 
over the departed. They are like friends, who, in thinking of 
our need, forget all they have laid up against us ; and, between 
them and the lofty spirits of mankind, there is another point of 
resemblance which I am woodsman enough to know. Hew down 
those gay trees, whose leaves scatter at the coming of winter, 
and they will sprout from the trodden root more vigorously than 
before. The evergreen, once struck to the heart, dies. If you 
are of my mind, you would rather learn such a pretty mock of 
yourself in Nature, than catch a fish with a gold ring in his maw. 
A day or two since, very much such another bit of country 
wisdom dropped into my ears, which I thought might be availa- 
ble in poetry, albeit the proof be unpoetical. Talking with my 
neighbor, the miller, about sawing lumber for a stable I am build- 
ing, I discovered, incidentally, that the mill will do more work 



156 LETTER XVIII. 



between sunset and dawn, than in tlie same number of hours 
by dayhght. Without reasoning upon it, the miller knows ipYSLG- 
iicsiW J that strea7ns run faster at flight. The increased heaviness 
of the air, and the withdrawal of the attraction of light, are pro- 
bably the causes. But there is a neat tail for a sonnet coiled up 
in the fact, and you may blow it with a long breath to Tom Moore. 
Many thanks for your offer of shopping for us, but you do in- 
justice to the '' cash stores" of Owego when you presume tha.t 
there is anything short of '^ a hair off the great Cham*s beard,'* 
which is not found in their inventory. By the way, there is one 
article of which I feel the daily want, and, as you live among au- 
thors who procure them ready made for ballads and romances, 
perhaps you ean send me one before the canal freezes. I mean 
a venerable hermit, who, having passed through all the vicissi- 
tudes of human life, shall have nothing earthly to occupy him 
but to live in the woods and dispense wisdom, gratis, to all com- 
ers. I don't know whether, in your giddy town vocations, it has 
ever occurred to you to turn short upon yourself, in the midst of 
some grave but insignificant routine, and inquire (of- the gentle- 
man within) whether this is the fulfillment of your destiny ; 
whether these little nothings are the links, near your eye, of the 
great chain, which you fancy, in your elevated hours, connects 
you with something kindred to the stars. It is oftenest in fine 
weather that I thus step out of myself, and, retiring a little space, 
borrow the eyes of my better angel, and take a look at the indi- 
vidual I have vacated. You shall see him yourself, dear Doc- 
tor, with three strokes of the pen ; and, in giving your judgment 
of the dignity of his pursuits, perform the office to which I des- 
tine the hermit above bespoken, 



PORTRAITS FROM A BARiN, 157 



It is not tlie stout fellow, with the black London hat, some- 
what rusty, who stands raking away cobs from the barn-floor, 
though the hat has seen worshipful society, (having fallen on 
those blessed days when hats are as inseparable from the wearer 
as silk stocking or culotte,) and sports that breadth of brim by 
which you know me as far off as your indigenous omnibus. 
That's Jem, the groom, to whom, with all its reminiscences, the 
hat is but a tile. Nor is it the half sailor-looking, world- worn, 
never-smiling man, who is plying a flail upon that floor of corn, 
with a look as if he had learned the stroke with a cutlass, though, 
in his ripped and shredded upper garment, you might recognize 
the frogged and velvet redingote, native of the Rue de la Paix, 
which has fluttered on the Symplegades, and flapped the dust 
of the Acropolis. That is my tenant in the wood, who, having 
passed his youth and middle age with little content in a more re- 
sponsible sphere of hfe, has limited his wishes to solitude and a 
supply of the wants of nature ; and, though quite capable of tell- 
ing story for story with my old fellow traveller, probably thinks 
of it only to wish its ravelled frogs were horn buttons, and its 
bursted seams less penetrable by the rain. 

And a third person is one of my neighbors, who can see nothing 
done without showing you a '' 'cuter way," and who, sitting on 
the sill of the barn, is amusing himself, quite of his own accord, 
with beheading, cleaning, and picking an unfortunate duck, whose 
leg was accidentally broken by the flail. His voluntary occupa- 
tion is stimulated by neither interest nor good nature, but is 
simply the itching to be doing something, which, in one shape or 
another, belongs to every genuine Jonathan. Near him, in cow- 
hide boots, frock of fustian, and broad-brimmed sombrero of 



158 LETTER XVIII. 



coarse straw, stands, breathing from a bout with the flail, the in- 
dividual from whom I have stepped apart, and upon whose 
morning's worth of existence you shall put a philosopher's esti- 
mate. 

I presume my three hours' labor might be done for about 
three shillings — my mind, meantime, being entirely occupied with 
what I was about, calculating the number of bushels to the acre, 
the price of corn farther down the river, and, between whiles, dis- 
cussing the merits of a patent corn-sheller, which we had aban- 
doned for the more laborious but quicker process of thrashing. 

" Purty 'cute tool !" says my neighbor, giving the machine 
a look out of the corner of his yellow eye, '' but teoo slow ! 
Corn ought to come off ravin' distracted, 'Taint no use to eat it 
up in labor. Where was that got out ?" 

*' 'Twas invented in Albany, I rather think." 

*' Wal, I guess t'want. It's a Var mount notion. Rot them 
Green Mounting-eers ! they're a spiling the country. People 
won't work when them things lay round. Have you heern of a 
machine for buttoning your gallowses behind ?" 

" ISTo, I have not." 

" Wal, IVe been expecting on't. There aint no other hard 
work they haint economized. Is them your hogs in the gard- 
ing?" 

Three vast porkers had nosed open the gate, during the dis- 
cussion, and were making the best of their opportunities. After 
a vigorous chase, the latch was closed upon them securely, and 
my neighbor resumed his duck. 

^^ Is there no way of forcing people to keep those brutes at 
home?" I asked of my silent tenant. 



RIDDANCE OF NUISANCE. 159 



" Yes, sir. The law provides that you may shut them up, and 
send word to the owners to come and take them away." 

" Wal ! It's a chore, if you ever tried it, to catch a hog if he's 
middlin' spry, and when he's cotch, you've got to feed him, by 
law, till he's sent for ; and it don't pay, mister." 

" But you can charge for the feed," says the other. 

'' Pesky little, I tell ye. Pig fodder 's cheap, and they don't 
pay you for carrying on't to 'em, nor for catching the critters. 
It's a losin' consarn." 

*' Suppose I shoot them." 

" Sartin you can. The owner '11 put his vally on it, and you 
can have as much pork at that price as '11 fill your barn. The 
hull neighb'rhood '11 drive their hogs into your gar ding." 
^ I saw that my neighbor had looked at the matter all round ; 
but I was sure, from his manner, that he could, if encouraged, 
suggest a remedy for the nuisance. 

" I would give a bushel of that handsome corn," said I, " to 
know how to be rid of them." 

" Be so perlite as to measure it out, mister, while I head in 
that hog. I'll show you how the deacon kept 'em out of the 
new buryin' ground while the fence was buildin'." 

He laid down the duck, which was, by this time, fairly picked, 
and stood a moment looking at the three hogs, now leisurely turn- 
ing up the grass at the roadside. For a reason which I did not at 
the moment conceive, he presently made a dash at the thinnest 
of the three, a hungry -looking brute, built with an approach to 
the greyhound, and missed catching him by an arm's length. 
Unluckily for the hog, however, the road was lined with crooked 
rail fence, which deceived him with constant promise of escape by 



160 LETTER XVIIL 



a short turn ; and, by a skillful heading oflf, and a most industrious 
chase of some fifteen minutes, he was cornered at last, and se- 
cured by the hind leg. 

^' A hog," said he, dragging him along with the greatest gravi- 
ty, '' hates a straight line like pizen. If they'd run right in eend, 
you'd never catch 'em in natur. Like some folks, aint it ? Boy, 
fetch me a skrimmage of them whole corn." 

He drove the hog before him, wheelbarrow fashion, into an 
open cow-pen, and put up the bars. The boy (his son, who had 
been waiting for him outside the barn) brought him a few ears 
of ripe corn, and, as soon as the hog had recovered his breath a 
little, he threw them into the pen, and drew out a knife from his 
pocket, which he whetted on the rail before him. 

'' jN'ow," said he, as the voracious animal, unaccustomed 
to such appetizing food, seized ravenously on the corn, " it's 
according to law to take up a stray hog and feed him, 
aint it?" 

'' Certainly." 

By this time the greedy creature began to show symptoms of 
choking, and my friend's design became clearer. 

*^ And it's Christian charity," he continued, letting down the 
bars, and stepping in as the hog rolled upon his side, " not to let 
your neighbor lose his critters by choking, if you can kill 'em in 
time to save their meat, ain't it ?" 

'' Certainly." 

'' Wal !" said he, cutting the animal's throat, *' you can send 
word to the owner of that pork to come and take it away, arid, if 
he don't like to salt down at a minute's notice, he'll keep the rest 
at hum, and pay you for your corn. And that's the way the 



WEATHER, AS TO DIGNITY. IGl 



deacon sarved my hogs, darn his long face, and I eat pork till I 
was sick of the sight on't." 

A bushel of corn being worth about six shillings, I had paid 
twice the worth of my own morning's work for this very Yankee 
expedient. My neighbor borrowed a bag, shouldered his grist, 
and trudged off to the mill ; and, relinquishing my flail to Jem, I 
leaned over the fence in the warm autumn sunshine, and, with my 
eyes on the swift, yet still bosom of the river below, fell to won- 
dering, as I said before^ whether the hour, of which I have given 
you a picture, was a fitting link in a wise man's destiny. The 
day was one to give birth to great resolves, bright, elastic, and 
genial ; and the leafless trees, so lorn and comfortless in cloudier 
times, seemed lifting into the sky with heroic endurance, while 
the swollen Owaga, flowing on with twice the summer's depth, 
semed gathering soul to defy the fetters of winter. There 
was something inharmonious with little pursuits, in everything I 
could see. Such air and sunshine, I thought, should overtake 
one in some labor of philanthropy, in some sacrifice for friend or 
country, in the glow of some noble composition, or, if in the ex- 
ercise of physical energy, at least to some large profit. Yet a 
few shillings expressed the whole result of my morning's em- 
ployment, and the society by which my thoughts had been 
colored were such as I have described. Still this is '^ farming," 
and so lived Cincinnatus. 

Now, dear Doctor, you can be grand among your gallipots, and 
if your eye turns in upon yourself, you may reflect complacently 
on the almost sublime ends of the art of healing ; but resolve me, 
if you please, my little problem. What state of the weathei 
should I live up to ? My present avocations, well enough in a 



162 LETTER XVII. 



gray day, or a rainy, or a raw, are quite put out of countenance 
by a blue sky and a genial sun. If it were always like to-day, I 
should be obliged to seek distinction, in some way. There would 
be no looking such a sky in the face three days consecutively, 
busied always with pigs and corn, You see the use of a hermit 
to settle such points. But adieu, while I have room to write it. 



LETTER XIX. 

Db:ar Doctor : This, though a good working-day by the alma- 
nac, is, with me, one of those mental Sundays, when imagination, 
memory, causality, and the other 'prentices of the workshop, seem 
bent upon a holiday. There is no visible reason why I should 
not '' toil and spin." My breakfast sits lightly and the sun hes 
warm upon my slipshod feet ; Foible, my dog, waits with pa- 
tience the hour to go to the woods, and every wheel in the com- 
plicated machinery of the little world I govern is right by the 
clock ; yet here have I sat two golden hours, unprofitably idle. 
And here must I sit, busy or idle, till the village bell come over 
the fields with noon, for, in humble imitation of Alfieri, who had 
himself chained to his chair to conquer his truant humor, I 
am a prisoner to dressing-gown and good resolution till blessed 
*' twelve" lets me out with the school-boys. What to do with 
this recusant pen, chained to my fingers like the oar to the galley- 
slave ? 

'' Boz" has commenced the harvest of his laurels, but I wish 
he would suddenly drop his cognito and see the country under 
some other name. His swallow, I think, is not large, and, if a 



164 LETTER XIX. 



week of our whole -hog regimen of comphment do not gorge him, 
it will be that he wears a vicarious stomach in his doublet. Quite 
as highly spiced would be the tributes he might pick up by the 
wayside — tributes without eyes or ears, exacting neither blushes 
nor disclaimers, neither toast nor speech responsive. I really 
think, that, making the round of our country under the happy 
name of Smith, and lifting his mask here and there to those who 
struck his fancy, Dickens might leave us with a sense deeper and 
sweeter of our love for his genius, than he is likely to gather with 
the vexed brains and morning headaches of his ovation. Every- 
body knows him. Everybody loves him. And, faith ! I don't 
see why he should be much pitied, after all ! A man might bear 
such popularity as his, whatever '' questionable shape" it could 
assume. At his age to " put a girdle round the earth'' as broad 
as the language in which he writes, and, following it three thousand 
miles west, to find it embroidered with a great nation in alto re- 
lievo — {raised to meet him) — this is a lifetime renown to make 
Milton stare back over the walls of Paradise— to make Dante 
swear by his own Inferno that he was born six centuries too soon ! 
It is Charles Dickens's due, no doubt, and the payment of these 
airy dues, prompt and honest as it is, would come with a better 
grace if a per-centage of the vast sale of his works were not also 
Charles Dickens's due ! If State debts could be paid in compli- 
mentary dinners, however, '' Mississippi" and '' Governor Mc- 
l^utt" might not be by- words on the London Exchange. We are 
a famous nation for paying — comphments ! I wish to God we 
were not as famous for robbing authors. 

May Henry Clay (whom God bless !) take at the iood this 



DICKENS. I(j5 



popular enthusiasm for a pillaged author, and lead it on to the 

amendment of our law of copyright. 

^ % % % % % % 

You are to understand this line of stars as expressing a domes- 
tic eclipse of three weeks, during which I have made my appari- 
tion in most of our principal cities, seen the ^^ BozBall," and aired 
my holiday clothes and my holiday manners. It was partly busi- 
ness that took nae off so suddenly, and partly ^o^-iness, I am free 
to confess. I wished to see this most loveable of authors wearing 
his bays, and I felt my heart with the country — discreet or indis- 
creet in its rush to do him honor. So over the hills I jolted — 
three days and nights in spring-less lumber wagons, (substitutes 
for coaches in the muddy months,) and, well qualified for any 
stand-up amusement, I joined the great multitude at the Park. 
With the cobwebs newly brushed out of my eyes, I was, of course, 
susceptible to all the illusions of lights, loveliness and music, and 
to me it was very enchanting work. Dickens's joyous counte- 
nance and the bonhomie and simplicity of his manners height- 
ened, I thought, even the expectant enthusiasm with which his 
admirers had come to the ball, and it is enough to say he lost no 
hearts that night — for all chansres to him, in the tenure of that 
commodity, must be losses. He seemed, himself, in all honesty 
of feehng, delighted with his reception — sans arriere pensee, if I 
may be-French you a little. It was an anomaly to see a Dives 
in literature — a man of great genius receiving his " good things 
in this life," and it was an anomaly to see a man of deep thoughts 
wearing '* his heart on his sleeve,'' like a merry school-boy. He 
reflected everybody's smile — as gaily unembarrassed among the 
loving looks and bright eyes as a bird in a garden. There was a 



: QQ LETTER XIX. 

delicate line to hit, between reserve and condescension, between 
* embarrassment and insensibility — a difficult part to play, alto-^ 
gether — and Boz w^as made for it. He is what Balzac calls un 
expansif — with good humor enough, and address, and spirit, suf- 
ficiently prompt and mercurial, to spread himself over as much 
of the world as can get near him, bodily. '^ Popular'' is a mis- 
used word, but, in its best sense, Dickens is popular — popular in 
his boots as in his books, the right mind for the people and the 
right man for the people — rind and core of the same clear ripe- 
ness and sweetness. The very young ladies have been somewhat 
disappointed in his beauty, (as they would be, no doubt, in the 
Apollo's, if that gentleman were off his pedestal and walking 
about, dressed like Mr. Dickens,) but I do not beheve one has 
seen him without loving him. He is exempt from the disenchant- 
ment common and fatal to most ''idols taking a walk." 

" But tell us something about the ball," quoth you. Truly 
there is little left to tell after the morning papers have had their 
will of it. There is always, at every great ball I ever heard of, 
one complete marvel in the shape of a girl of sixteen, of un- 
known coinage, but virgin gold — the cynosure of all eyes ; and 
such a one I spent my moment in watching, paying, to that extent, 
my willing tribute to her beauty. She had an old-fashioned face, 
moulded after Stuart IS'ewton's ideal, with nothing in it, except 
the complexion, which fifty years could no more than mellow. 
I should like to know the race of that girl — I should like to 
know by what fathering and mothering such features, and frame, 
and countenance are brought about. Faultlessly dressed, grace- 
ful, dignified, and so beautiful — and dancing only with men 
whom nobody knew, and who had, (affinities governing,) no right 



MRS. DICKENS. le'i 



on eai th to know her — it was a precious traverse altogether. I , 
so far overstepped by usual let-slide philosophy as to nudge a *^ 
very earnest looker-on, and beg pardon for asking the lady's 
name, but, without removing his eyes from the little bright teeth 
just then disclosing with a smile, he expressed a wish to be in- 
formed on the subject himself — phrasing his reply, however, with 
more emphasis than piety. 

A hint from one of the managers that a certain small curtain 
near the stage box, was the introitus to champagne and oysters, 
coupled (the hint) with the agreeable request that I would fol- 
low thither in the suite of Mrs. Dickens, drew me out of the 
charmed circle of the incognita, and I saw her no more. 

As to any other of the *' abouts" of the ball, my dear friend, 
I fear I cannot minister to your aristocratic taste, for, in all mixed 
societies, I ply among the plebeians — preferring a rude novelty to 
polished platitude. Your friends were all there (I heard) in the 
boxes. I was on the floor. Not dancing — for, '' at my time of 
life," etc., etc. — but being amused — studying the nice line of 
manners by the departures from it — thanking Heaven for degrees in 
all things — seeking what, no doubt, gives zest to an angel's errand 
on earth, change from the stereotype of perfection. I must say 
it is a great charm in vulgarians, that, as Sir Fopling says, " you 
never know what the devil they may do next," while au contrairey 
the dead certainty of sequence, under all circumstances, in polite 
society, makes of it the very treadmill of pleasure. 

I have not told you ''about" Mrs. Dickens, however. She 
was, of course, the star of the evening, second in brightness. 
Great interest was felt on seeing her, the world being aware thai; 
$he had loved the leading star of the night without knowing his 



168 LETTER XIX. 

'* place ill the heavens/' and wedded him before his rising. And 
'resides this, there was the interest felt alwaj^s in the wife of a 
jian of genius — priestess as she is to the bright fire — nearest and 
dearest to the wondrous heart v/hich supplies to his imaginations 
all their reality — model as she muse be for the subtlest delinea- 
tions of pure love, the truest and fairest features of his pictures 
of woman. She has risen with him, she and her children, a 
cluster of stars around him, and the world is perhaps not over- 
stepping the limit of delicacy in bending, on the whole constella- 
tion, the telescope of affectionate curiosity. Mrs. Dickens seemed 
to me a woman worthy to count her hours by Master Humphrey's 
clock — appreciative, to the extremest nerve, of her husband's 
genius, and feeling, with exquisite sensibility, the virtuous quality 
and the prodigal overflowing of his fame. They have four chil- 
dren. Dickens showed me a deUcious drawing of them by his 
friend Maclise, with Grip the raven perched gravely on the back 
of the chair in which the youngest was seated. Separation from 
these seems to be the only alloy in their pleasure among us, and 
1 fear they will be drawn home sooner than were otherwise best 
by this powerful chain. God give them a happy reunion ! 

As to other and more general '' Boziana," are they not written 
in the Dailies and glorified in the '* Extras ?" It would interest 
you, perhaps, could I describe the tribute of some literary 
milliner, which came in while I was calling, on the day of the 
ball — a very smart bonnet with a very smart plume, for Mrs. 
Dickens ; but for that, and for the anonymous bouquets which 
entered, like a well-timed floral procession, one every half hour, 
you must draw on your imagination. To my thinking, the 
milHner's tribute was very national, and quite as well worth 



SPEED OF TRAVEL. 169 



Dickens's thanks as the diamond snuff-boxes which have conveyed 
to him the homage of nobihty. 

I should have something to tell you of the Dickens dinner, 
had I been there. But the obscurest diner-out, in these days, is 
not safe from the indiscretion of friends who have sentences to 
round off, and the calling on a hen for an egg, while she stands 
on th« fence, would seem to me reasonable in comparison with 
asking for my sentiments to be delivered on my legs. However 
mj progeny may swim or fly, I am a barn-door fowl, and must 
have a quiet incubation. So, the morning after the ball, I flitted 
like a ghost before cock-crowing — content to let Mathews and 
Duer, and others more " to the manner born/' accomplish their 
delivery in what posture it pleased God. These gentlemen, by 
the way, threw the whole force of their eloquence into the cause 
of copyright, and for that they deserve the thanks of authors, 
and they have mine. The question is one of such simple justice 
that it only needs, like the *' boots of Boss Richards,'' to be 
''kept before the people." Author-land is the desecrated Holy- 
land of our time, and the crusade for its recovery from degrada- 
tion is now afoot — -Cooper, ''on his own hook," doing noble 
i^ervice. 

Let railroads be glorified ! The boy, longing for seven-league 
boots — the frost-ridden yearnings to up wing and speed south- 
erly with the birds — may be satisfied now. I found friends in the 
cars, and it seemed to me that I had been translated from l^ew^ 
York to Washington in a morning call. A glance at a newspa- 
per, a little chat about Dickens, an exchange of news and hap- 
penings, a glance at Jersey and Maryland and the pair of dark 
eyes in the corner, and lo ! the Capitol ! Quanta mutatus ah 

VOL. I. 8 



170 LETTER XIX, 



stage-coach ! And changed too are the road-sideries ! (Mayn't 
one make a word, pray ?) The once clammy-banistered and be- 
niggered hotel in Philadelphia (the '' United States") is now like 
the union of an English club with an English country-house- 
clean as quakerism, tastefully appointed, vigilantly served, and no 
less elegant than comfortable. Never before have I found a 
hotel in Philadelphia which was a fair exponent of that refined 
city. Then Barnum's in Baltimore has " cast its slough," and is 
fiorescent in elegancies, (a shade flowery too in its bills,) and 
altogether it is easier than it used to be, (to others besides '' rising 
young men,") to get to Washington. Here, to be sure, in the 
matter of provender, you perceive the difference in your latitude. 
" Point Comfort" is farther south. But Washington is a great 
place for '' steering wide," and there is enough to enjoy in its 
troubled waters, particularly for those who know the value of 
'* favoring Gales." 

It is all hack-ing at Washington, so I hack'd up to the Capitol, 
(Morris merely says, '' thou shalt not hack it down'') and made 
straiglit for Greenough's statue. Ye gods ! who is his enemy ? 
Why is the statue not covered, till a light is found for it ? Why 
are the masons at work, building it up a second time where it 
stands, when the shadow of • the brows covers the whole face, 
and the shadows of the chest are so misplaced that the abdomen 
looks contracted like that of a man in pain. And so of the rest. 
It is all perverted — all seen to disadvantage — and yet thousands 
of people have flocked to see it, and (not as in Italy, where the 
error of its position would be at once understood and allowed 
for) every spectator goes away with an uneasy doubt of its eff'ect 
— an unexplained dissatisfaction with the statue. Force your 



GREENCUGH S WASHINGTON. , l^Jl 



eyes through the darkness — generalize the details by a vigorous 
effort of imagination, and you can see, afar off, the grand design 
of the artist, and form some idea of what it would be, well 
lighted. Greenough should be here — he should have been here 
when it was first posed — and, till he come, it should only be 
exhibited by torch-hght. My own impression is, that it will 
never be properly lighted in the Rotunda, unless the dome is 
pierced ; and, light it as you will, while it stands in such close con- 
trast with other works of art of the size of life, it will be less ef- 
fective there than elsewhere. Standing in the place of the col- 
umn of naval trophies in the front of the Capitol, with a lofty 
dome built over it, it would be seen by those ascending to the 
House, in all its grandeur. This only by way of random sugges- 
tion, however. I am no authority in such matters. Greenough's 
genius is one which requires no delicacy in the handling, and the 
suggestion is not to him. He can put his statue where it will 
exact from all beholders its due of admiration ; but, loving his 
genius as I do, loving the man, as every one does who knows his 
great and sweet qualities, I would express here the impatience I 
feel at the inevitable though temporary misappreciation of his 
work. 

Turning on my heel in a very ill humor, I found myself oppo- 
site Chapman's Baptism of Pocahontas. I had read a score of 
criticisms on this painting, some favorable and some not, and from 
the whole had made up my mind to see a very different quality 
of picture. In my opinion no writer has done justice to it, or 
rather, the upshot of what criticism it has elicited gives altogether 
an erroneous impression as to Mr. Chapman's success. It is a 
peculiar picture, conceived and executed in a severe style of art, 



172 LETTER XIX. 



and is not such a miracle as to be incapable of exception or criti- 
cism ; but it is a noble design, exquisitely colored, and the whole 
effect is at once to transcend and supplant the spectator's previous 
conception of the scene portrayed. As one of the republican 
sovereigns by v\/^hose order it v^as painted, I pronounce myself 
entirely satisfied, and wish we may get as much honor for our 
money on the other panels. 

I passed an hour or two in the Gallery of the House, renewing 
my eyesight acquaintance with some of the nation's counsellors, 
and was not a little amused by a group of lookers-on close by, 
and their standard of legislative distinction. They were pointing 
out to each other the different members, with the one commen- 
tary, ''he's pluck," or, "he isn't pluck," and, positively, in half 
an hour's calling over of great names to which I listened, there 
was passed on them no other comment. To be *' pluck," it would 
seem, is the great claim to the digito monstrari at Washington — 
though, (if one may ''tell Priam so,") it would be a better read- 
ing in the sense of " pluck up drowned honor by the locks." 
Mr. Wise, by the way, in a speech most eloquently deUvered 
that morning, went into a vindication of the irregularities of the 
House, and satisfied me, not that he was right in his argument, 
but that he was a natural orator of a high order. I thought few 
at Washington seemed quite aware of the feeling, at the outer 
end of the radius, touching the " gentle amenities" which have 
distinguished i\iQ last two sessions of Congress. 

I saw the President, and found him a more benevolent and 
younger and better looking man than any of his portraits. I saw, 
at a distance only, our peerless " Harry," " built round" with 
noble dignity, expressing in his lofty presence his country's 



PHILADELPHIA l*JS 



estimate of his qualities. Clay looks the President — propheti- 
cally, I hope and trust. And all the people say Amen ! — at 
least all those with whom I have chanced to converse on the 
subject. 

After two days of the pendulum life at Washington, going and 
coming between the White House and the Capitol, I turned once 
more toward the teetotal zone, (''temperate" will scarce express 
it,) and was in Philadelphia with a magician's '^ presto T' For 
the first time in my life, I saw a city with a look of depression. 
Commonly a public distress has no outward countenance. The 
houses and equipages, the children and the shop -windows, the 
very sufferers themselves when abroad, wear the habitual aspect 
of occupation and prosperity. Not so now in Philadelphia. It 
is a city of troubled brows and anxious lips ; and you have scarce 
walked an hour in the street before you become infected with 
the depressed atmosphere, and long to be away. You see why I 
do not play the jpetit courier des dames, as my country friends 
exact of me in my travels. I used to send you the fashions, after 
a walk in Chestnut Street. ISTo place like it for an affiche des 
modes ! But, though a fine day, and the pavement as tempting 
as the bank of the Arno in April, not a petticoat did I see abroad 
with which a brown paper parcel would have been an incongruity. 
For the fashions, indeed, though I was at a singularly brilliant 
party (concert and ball) given to Dickens the night after, in l^ew 
York, I saw nothing but anarchy. The plump wear the tight 
sleeve — becoming to plump titude. The thin wear the gigot and 
Its varieties — becoming to thinliness. Yes — one *' new wrinkle 1** 
Ears have been put out of fashion by some one who had reasons for 
concealing hers, and the hair is worn in a bandage, smooth down 



174 . LETTER XIX. 



from the apex of the forehead over temples and ears, and gath- 
ered in a knot, well under the bump of philoprogenitiveness. It 
is pretty — on a pretty woman — as what is not ? 
And now, having told you all I know of 

— " the violets, 
That strew the green lap ot* the new-come Spring," 

(violets, in the city, meaning news and fashions,) I must lay aside 
this abominable pen, mended once too often for the purity of my 
scrivening finger, and dismiss my letter to the post. Adieu. 



LETTER XX. 

Dear Doctor : You want a letter upon landscape gardening — ^ 
apropos of your delight in Downing's elegant and tempting book 
on Rural Architecture. It is a pleasant subject to expand upon, 
and I am not surprised that men, sitting amid hot editorials in a 
city, (the month of July,) find a certain facility in creating woods 
and walks, planting hedges and building conservatories. So may 
the brain be refreshed, I well know, even with the smell of print- 
ing ink in the nostrils. But landscape gardening, as within the 
reach of the small farmer people, is quite another thing, and to 
be managed (as brain-gardening need not be, to be sure) with 
economy and moderation. Tell us in the quarterhes, if you will, 
what a man may do with a thousand acres and plenty of money ; 
but I will endeavor to show vfhat may be done with fifty acres 
and a spare hour in the evening — by the tasteful farmer, or the 
tradesman retired on small means. These own their fifty acres, 
(more or less,) up to the sky and down to the bottom of their 
'* diggings," and as Nature lets the tree grow and the flower ex- 
pand for a man, without reference to his account at the bank, 
they have it in their power to embelhsh, and, most commonly, 
they have also the inclination. Beginners, however, at this, as at 



176 LETTER XX. 



most other things, are at the mercy of injudicious counsel, and 
few books can be more expensively misapplied than the treatises 
on landscape gardening. 

The most intense and sincere lovers of the country are citizens 
who have fled to rural life in middle age, and old travellers who 
are weary, heart and foot, and long for shelter and rest. Both 
these classes of men are ornamental in their tastes — the first, 
because the country is his passion, heightened by abstinence ; 
and the latter, because he remembers the secluded and sweet 
spots he has crossed in travel, and yearns for something that 
resembles them, of his own. To begin at the beginning, I will 
suppose such a man, as either of these, in search of land to 
purchase and build upon. His means are moderate* 

Leaving the climate and productiveness of soil out of the ques- 
tion, the main things to find united are shade, water, and inequality 
of surface. With these three features given by ^Nature, any spot 
may be made beautiful, and at very little cost ; and, fortunately 
for purchasers in this country, most land is valued and sold with 
little or no reference to these or other capabilities for embeUish- 
ment. Water, in a country so laced with rivers, is easily found. 
Yet there are hints worth giving, perhaps, obvious as they seem, 
even in the selection of water. A small and rapid river is prefer- 
able to a large river or lake. The Hudson, for instance, is too 
broad to bridge, and, beautiful as the sites are upon its banks, 
the residents have but one egress and one drive — the country 
behind them. If they could cross to the other side, and radiate 
in every direction in their evening drives, the villas on that noble 
river would be trebled in value. One soon tires of riding up and 
down one bank of a river, and, without a taste for boating, the 



SELECTION OF FARMS. 177 



beautiful expanse of water soon becomes an irksome barrier. 
Very much the same remark is true of the borders of lakes, with 
the additional objection, that there is no variety to the view. A 
small, bright stream, such as hundreds of nameless ones in these 
beautiful northern States — spanned by bridges at every half mile, 
followed always by the roads which naturally seek the level, and 
winding into picturesque surprises, appearing and disappearing 
continually — is, in itself, an ever-renewing poem, crowded with 
changeable pictures, and every day tempting you to follow or 
trace back its bright current. Small rivers, again, insure to a 
degree the other two requisites— shade and inequality of surface — 
the interval being proportionately narrow, and, backed by slopes 
and alluvial soil, usually producing the various nut and maple 
trees, which, for their fruit and sap, have been spared by the 
inexorable axes of the first settlers. If there is any land in the 
country, the price of which is raised from the supposed desirable- 
ness of the site, it is upon the lakes and larger rivers, leaving the 
smaller rivers, fortunately, still within the scale of the people's 
means. 

One more word as to the selection of a spot. The rivers in the 
United States, more than those of older countries, are variable in 
their quantity of water. The banks of many of the most pictur- 
esque, present, at the season of the year when we most wish it 
otherwise, (in the sultry heats of August and September,) bared 
rocks or beds of ooze, while the stream runs sluggishly and 
uninvitingly between. Those which are fed principally by springs, 
however, are less liable to the effects of drought than those which 
are the outlets of large bodies of water ; and,, indeed, there is 
great difference in rivers in this respect, depending on the degree 



178 LETTER XX. 



in which their courses are shaded, and other causes. It will be 
safest, consequently, to select a site in August, when the water 
is at the lowest, preferring, of course, a bold and high bank as a 
protection against freshets and flood-wood. The remotest chance 
of a war with water, damming against wash and flood, fills an 
old settler with economical alarm. 

It was doubtless a " small chore" for the deluge to heave up 
a mound or slope a bank, but, with one spade at a dollar a day, 
the moving of earth is a discouraging job ; and, in selecting a place 
to live, it is well to be apprised what diggings may become neces- 
sary, and how your hay and water, wood, visitors, and lumber 
generally, are to come and go. A man's first fancy is commonly 
to build on a hill ; but as he lives on, year after year, he would 
like his house lower and lower, till, if the fairies had done it for 
him at each succeeding wish, he would trouble them at last to 
dig his cellar at the bottom. It is hard mounting a hill daily, 
with tired horses, and it is dangerous driving down with full- 
belhed ones from the stable-door, and your friends deduct, from 
the pleasure of seeing you, the inconvenience of ascending and 
descending. The view, for which you build high, you soon dis- 
cover is not daily bread, but an occasional treat — more worth, as 
well as better liked for the walk to get it, and (you have selected 
your site, of course, with a southern exposure) a good stiff hill 
at your back, nine months in the year, saves several degrees of 
the thermometer, and sundry chimney-tops, barn-roofs, and other 
furniture peripatetic in a tempest. Then your hill-road washes with 
the rains, and needs continual mending, and the dweller on the 
hill needs one more horse and two more oxen than the dweller in 
the valley. One thing more. There rises a night-mist, (never 



VALUE OF NEIGHBORS. 170 



unwholesome from running water,) wliicli protects fruit-trees froir; 
frost, to a certain level above the river, at certain critical seasons : 
and so end the reasons for building low. 

I am supposing all along, dear reader, that you have had no 
experience of country life, but that, sick of a number in a brici. 
block, or (if a traveller) weary of " the perpetual flow of people,'' 
you want a patch of the globe's surface to yourself, and room 
enough to scream, let off champagne-corks, or throw stones, with- 
out disturbance to your neighbor. The intense yearning for thi^i 
degree of liberty has led some seekers after the pastoral rather 
farther into the wilderness than was necessary ; and, while writing 
on the subject of a selection of rural sites, it is worth while, per- 
haps, to specify the desirable degree of neighborhood. 

In your own person, probably, you do not combine blacksmith, 
carpenter, tinman, grocer, apothecary, wet-nurse, dry-nurse, 
washerwoman, and doctor. Shoes and clothes can wait your 
convenience for mending ; but the little necessities supplied by 
the above list of vocations are rather imperative, and they can 
only be ministered to, in any degree of comfortable perfection, by 
a village of at least a thousand inhabitants. Two or three miles 
is far enough to send your horse to be shod, and far enough to 
send for doctor or washerwoman, and half the distance would be 
better, if there were no prospect of the extension of the village 
limits. But the common diameter of idle boys' rambles is a mile 
out of the village, and to be just beyond that is very necessary, 
if you care for your plums and apples. The church-bell should 
be within hearing, and it is mellowed deliciously by a mile or two 
of hill and dale, and your wife will probably belong to a '' sewing- 
circle,'* to which it is very much for her health to walk, especially 



180 LETTER XX. 



if the horse is wanted for ploughing. This suggests to me another 
point which I had nearly overlooked. 

The farmer pretends to no '' gentility ;" I may be permitted 
to say, therefore, that neighbors are a luxury, both expensive and 
inconvenient. The necessity you feel for society, of course, will 
modify very much the just-stated considerations on the subject 
of vicinage. He who has lived only in towns, or passed his life 
(as travellers do) only as a receiver of hospitality, is little 
aware of the difference between a country and city call, or 
between receiving a visit and paying one. In town, *• not at 
home," in any of its shapes, is a great preserver of personal 
liberty, and gives no offence. In the country you are " at home,'' 
will-you, nill-you. As a stranger paying a visit, you choose the 
time most convenient to yourself, and abridge the call at pleasure. 
In your own house, the visitor may find you at a very inconve- 
nient hour, stay a very inconvenient time, and, as you have no 
liberty to deny yourself at your country door, it may (or may 
not, I say, according to your taste) be a considerable evil. This 
point should be well settled, however, before you determine your 
distance from a closely-settled neighborhood ; for many a man 
would rather send his horse two miles further to be shod, than 
live within the convenience of '' sociable neighbors." A resident 
in a city, by-the-way, (and it is a point which should be kept in 
mind by the retiring metropohtan,) has, properly speaking, no 
neighbors. He has friends, chosen or made by similarity of pur- 
suit, congeniality of taste, or accident which might have been 
left unimproved. His literal neighbors he knows by name — if 
they keep a brass plate — but they are contented to know as little 
of him, and the acquaintance ends, without offence, in the perusal 



ECONOMY OF SECLUSION. 181 



of the name and number on the door. In the city, you pick your 
friends. In the country, you " take them in the lump.'' 

True, country neighbors are almost always desirable acquaint- 
ances — simple in their habits, and pure in their morals and 
conversation. But this letter is addressed to men retiring from 
the world, who look forward to the undisturbed enjoyment of 
trees and fields, who expect life to be filled up with the enjoy- 
ment of dew at morn, shade at noon, and the glory of sunset and 
starlight ; and who consider the complete repose of the articulating 
organs, and release from oppressive and unmeaning social obser- 
vances, as the fruition of Paradise. To men who have experience 
or philosophy enough to have reduced life to this, I should 
recommend a distance of ^ve miles from any village or any family 
wdth grown-up daughters. In this practical sermon, I may be 
forgiven for remarking, also^ that this degree of seclusion doubles 
an income, (by enabling a man to live on half of it,) and so, free- 
ing the mind from the care of pelf, removes the very gravest of 
the obstacles to happiness. I refer to no saving which infringes 
on comfort. The housekeeper who caters for her own family in 
an unvisited seclusion, and the housekeeper who provides for her 
family with an eye to the possible or probable interruption of ac- 
quaintances not friends, live at very different rates ; and the 
latter adds one dish to the bounty of the table, perhaps, but two 
to its vanity. Still more in the comfort and expensiveness of 
dress. The natural and most blissful costume of man in summer, 
all told, is shirt, shppers, and pantaloons. The compulsory arti- 
cles of coat, suspenders, waistcoat, and cravat, (gloves would be 
ridiculous,) are a tribute paid to the chance of visitors, as is also, 
probably, some dollars' difference in the quahty of the hat. 



182 LETTER XX. 



I say nothing of the comfort of a bad hat, (one you can sit 
upon, or water your horse from, or bide the storm in, without 
remorse,) nor of the luxury of having half a dozen, which you do 
when they are cheap, and so saving the mental burthen of retain- 
ing the geography of an article so easily mislaid. A man is a 
slave to anything on his person he is afraid to spoil — a slave (if 
he is not rich, as we are not, dear reader !) to any costly habiU- 
ment whatever. The trees nod no less graciously, (it is a pleasure 
to be able to say,) because one's trowsers are of a rational volume 
over the portion most tried by a sedentary man, nor because one's 
hat is of an equivocal shape — having served as a non-conductor 
between a wet log and its proprietor ; but ladies do — especially 
country ladies ; and even if they did not, there is enough of the 
leaven of youth, even in philosophers, to make them unwilling to 
appear to positive disadvantage, and unless you are quite at your 
ease as to even the ridiculous shabbiness of your outer man, there 
is no liberty — no economical liberty, I mean — in rural life. Do 
not mislead yourself, dear reader ! I am perfectly aware that a 
Spanish sombrero, a pair of large French trowsers plaited over the 
hips, a well-made English shoe, and a handsome checked shirt, 
form as easy a costume for the country as philosopher could de- 
sire. But I write for men who must attain the same comfort in 
a shirt of a perfectly independent description, trowsers, oftenest, 
that have seen service as tights, and show a fresher dye in the 
seams, a hat, price twenty-five cents, (by the dozen,) and shoes 
of a remediless capriciousness of outline. 

I acknowledge that such a costume is a liberty with daylight, 
which should only be taken within one's own fence, and that it is a 
misfortune to be surprised in it by a stranger, even there. But I 



DRESS IN THE COUNTRY. 183 



wish to impress upon those to whom this letter is addressed , the 
obligations of country neighborhood as to dress and table, and the 
expediency of securing the degree of liberty which may be de- 
sired, by a barrier of distance. Sociable country neighbors, as I 
said before, are a luxury, but they are certainly an expensive 
one. Judging by data within my reach, I should say that a man 
who could live for fifteen hundred dollars a year, within a mile of 
a sociable village, could have the same personal comforts at ten 
miles' distance for half the money. He numbers, say fifteen fam- 
iHes, in his acquaintance ; and, of course, pays at the rate of fifty 
dollars a family for the gratification. Now it is a questiprt 
whether you would not rather have the money in board fence or 
Berkshire hogs. You may like society, and yet not like it at 
such a high price. Or (but this would lead me to another sub- 
ject) you may prefer society in a lump ; and, with a house full 
of friends in the months of June and July, live in contemplative 
and economical solitude the remainder of the year. And this lat- 
ter plan I take the liberty to recommend more particularly to 
students and authors. 

Touching ''grounds." The first impulses of taste are dangerous 
to follow, no less from their blindness to unforeseen combinations, 
than from their expensiveness. In placing your house as far 
from the public road as possible, (and a considerable distance 
from dust and intrusion, seems at first a sine qua non,) you entail 
upon yourself a very costly appendage in the shape of a private 
road, which of course must be nicely gravelled and nicely kept. 
A walk or drive, within your gate, which is not hard and free 
from weeds, is as objectionable as an untidy white dress upon a 
lady ; and, as she would be better clad in russet, your road were 



184 LETTER XX. 



better covered with grass. I may as well say that a hundred 
yards of gravel-walk, properly "scored/' weeded, and rolled, 
will cost five dollars a month — a man's labor reckoned at the 
present usage. Kow no person for whom this letter is written 
can afford to keep more than one man-servant for *' chores." A 
hundred yards of gravel-walk, therefore, employing half his time, 
you can easily calculate the distribution of the remainder, upon 
the flower-garden, kitchen-garden, wood-shed, stable, and pig- 
gery. (The female *' help" should milk, if I died for it !) My 
own opinion is, that fifty yards from the road is far enough, and 
twenty a more prudent distance ; though, in the latter case, an 
impervious screen of shrubbery along your outer fence is indis- 
pensable. 

The matter of gravel-walks embraces several points of rural 
comfort, and, to do without them, you must have no young 
ladies in your acquaintance, and, especially, no young gentlemen 
from the cities. It may never have occurred to you in your side- 
walk life, that the dew falls in the country w^ith tolerable regu- 
larity ; and that from sundown to ten in the forenoon, you are as 
much insulated in a cottage surrounded with high grass, as on a 
rock surrounded with forty fathom water — shod a la mode, I 
mean. People talk of being '' pent up in a city," with perhaps 
twenty miles of flagged sidewalk extending from their door-stone ! 
They are apt to draw a contrast, favorable to the liberty of cities, 
however, if they come thinly shod to the country, and must 
either wade in the grass or stumble through the ruts of a dusty 
road. If you wish to see bodies acted on by an '' exhausted re- 
ceiver," (giving out their ''airs," of course,) shut up your young 
city friends in a country cottage, by the compulsion of wet grass 



CHEAP WALKS. 185 



and muddy highways. Better gravel your whole farm, you say. 
But having reduced you to this point of horror, you are prepared 
to listen without contempt, while I suggest two humble sue- 
cedanea. 

First : On receiving intimation of a probable visit from a city 
friend, write by return of post for the size of her foot, (or his.) 
Provide immediately a pair of India-rubber shoes of the corres- 
ponding number, and, on the morning after your friend's arrival, 
be ready with them at the first horrified withdrawal of the damp 
foot from the grass. Your shoes may cost you a dollar a pair, 
but, if your visitors are not more than ten or twelve in the season, 
it is a saving of fifty per cent., at least in gravelling and weeding. 

Or, Second : Enclose the two or three acres immediately about 
your house with a ring fence, and pasture within it a small flock 
of sheep. They are clean and picturesque, (your dog should be 
taught to keep them from the doors and porticoes, ) and, by feed- 
ing down the grass to a continual greensward, they give the dew 
a chance to dry off early, and enlarge your cottage " liberties '' to 
the extent of their browsings. 

I may as well add, by the way, that a walk with the sod sim- 
ply taken off, is, in this climate, dry enough, except for an hour 
or two after a heavy rain ; and, besides the original saving in 
gravel, it is kept clean with a quarter of the trouble. A weed 
imbedded in stones is a much more obstinate customer than a 
score of them sliced from the smooth ground. At any rate, out 
with them ! A neglected walk indicates that worst of country 
diseases, a mind grown slovenly and slip-slop ! Your house may 
go unpainted, and your dress (with one exception) submit to the 
course of events — but be scrupulous in the whiteness of your 



186 LETTER XX. 



linen, tenacious of the neatness of your gravel- walks ; and, while 
these points hold, you are at a redeemable remove from the 
lapse (fatally prone and easy) into barbarianism and misanthropy. 
Before I enter upon the cultivation of grounds, let me lay be- 
fore the reader my favorite idea of a cottage — not a cottage ornee 
but a cottage insoucieusey if I may coin a phrase. In the valley 
of Sweet Waters J on the banks of the Barbyses, there stands a 
small pleasure-palace of the Sultan, which looks as if it was 
dropped into the green lap of JSTature, like a jewel-case on a birth- 
day, with neither preparation on the part of the bestower, nor 
disturbance on the. part of the receiver. From the balcony's foot 
on every side extends an unbroken sod to the horizon. Gigantic 
trees shadow the grass here and there, and an enormous marble 
vase, carved in imitation of a sea-shell, turns the silver Barbyses 
in a curious cascade over its lip ; but else, it is all Nature's lap, 
with its bauble resting in velvet — no gardens, no fences, no walls, 
no shrubberies — a beautiful valley, with the sky resting on its 
rim, and nothing in it save one fairy palace. The simplicity of 
the thing enchanted me, and, in all my yearnings after rural se- 
clusion, this vision of old travel has, more or less, colored my 
fancy. You see what I mean, with half an eye. Gardens are 
beautiful, shrubberies ornamental, summer-houses and alleys, and 
gravelled paths, all delightful — but they are, each and all, taxes 
— ^heavy taxes on mind, time, and money. Perhaps you like 
them. Perhaps you want the occupation. But some men, of 
small means, like a contemplative idleness in the country. Some 
men's time never hangs heavily under a tree. Some men like to 
lock their doors, (or to be at liberty to do so,) and be gone for a 
month, without dread of gardens plundered, flowers trod down, 



TRUE COUNTRY FREEDOM. 187 



shrubs browsed off by cattle. Some men like nothing out of 
doors but that which can take care of itself — the side of a house 
or a forest-tree, or an old horse in a pasture. These men, too, 
like that which is beautiful, and for such I draw this picture of 
the cottage insoucieuse. What more simply elegant than a pretty 
structure in the lap of a green dell! What more convenient ! 
What so economical ! Sheep (we may '' return to muttons '') are 
cheaper '* help " than men, and if they do not keep your green- 
sward so brightly mown, they crop it faithfully and turn the crop 
to better account. The only rule of perfect independence in the 
country is to make no '^ improvement" which requires more at- 
tention than the making. So — you are at liberty to take your 
wife to the Springs. So — you can join a coterie at Niagara at a 
letter's vrarning. So — you can spend a winter in Italy without 
leaving half your income to servants who keep house at home. 
So — you can sleep without dread of hail-storms on your grape- 
ries or green-houses, without blunderbuss for depredators of 
fruit, without distress at slugs, cut- worms, drought, or breachy 
cattle. Nature is prodigal of flowers, grapes are cheaper bought 
than raised, fruit idem, butter idem, (though you mayn't think 
so,) and, as for amusement — the man who can not find it between 
driving, fishing, shooting, strolling, and reading, (to say nothing 
of less selfish pleasures,) has no business in the country. He 
should go back to town. 



LETTER XXI. 

[The following letter was addressed to a young gentleman of College, 

who is " bit by the dipsas" of authorship. His mother, a sensible, plain 
farmer's widow, chanced to be my companion, for a couple of days, in a 
stage-coach, and, while creeping over the mountains between the Hudson 
and the Susquehannah, she paid my common sense the compliment of un- 
burthening a very stout heart to me. Since her husband's death, she has 
herself managed the farm, and, by active, personal oversight, has contrived 
" to make both ends so far lap," (to use her own expression,) as to keep her 
only boy at college. By her description, he is a slenderish lad in his con- 
stitution, fond of poetry, and bent on trying his fortune with his pen, as 
soon as he has closed his thumb and finger on his degree. The good dame 
wished for the best advice I could give him on the subject, leaving it to me 
(after producing a piece of his poetry from her pocket, published in one of 
the city papers) to encourage or dissuade. I apprehended a troublesome 
job of it, but after a very genial conversation, (on the subject of raising 
turkeys, in which she quite agreed with me, that they were cheaper bought 
than raised, when corn was fifty cents a bushel — greedy gobblers !) I 
reverted to the topic of poetry, and promised to write the inspired sopho- 
more my views as to his prospects. 

Thus nms the letter : — ] 

Dear Sir : You will probably not recognize the handwriting 
in which you are addressed, but, by casting your eye to the con- 
clusion of the letter, you will see that it comes from an old stager 



MARKET FOR POETRY. 189 



in periodical literature ; and of that, as a profession, I am 
requested by your mother to give you, as she phrases it, " the 
cost and yield." You will allow what right you please to my 
opinions, and it is only with the authority of having lived by the 
pen, that I pretend to offer any hints on the subject for your 
guidance. As ''the farm" can afford you nothing beyond your 
education, you will excuse me for presuming that you need in- 
formation mainly as to the livelihood to be got from literature. 

Your mother thinks it is a poor market for potatoes, where 
potatoes are to be had for nothing ; and that is simply the condi- 
tion of American literature, (as protected by law.) The contributors 
to the numerous periodicals of England, are the picked men of 
thousands — the accepted of hosts rejected — the flower of a 
highly- educated and refined people — soldiers, sailors, lords, ladies, 
and lawyers — all at leisure, all anxious to turn a penny, all ambi- 
tious of print and profit ; and this great army, in addition to the 
hundreds urged by need and pure literary zeal — this great army, 
I say, are before you in the market, offering their wares to your 
natural customer, at a price for which you can not afford to sell 
— nothing ! It is true that, by this state of the literary market, 
you have fewer competitors among your countrymen — the best 
talent of the country being driven, by necessity, into less congenial 
and more profitable pursuits ; but even with this advantage (none 
but doomed authors in the field) you would probably find it 
difficult, within five years after you graduated, to convert your 
best piece of poetry into a genuine dollar. I allow you, at the 
same time, full credit for your undoubted genius. 

You naturally inquire how American authors live. I answer, 
by being English authors. There is no American author who 



190 LETTER XXI. 



lives by his pen, for whom London is not the chief market 
Those whose books sell only in this country, make scarce the 
wages of a day-laborer — always excepting religious writers, and 
the authors of school-books, and such works as owe their popu- 
larity to extrinsic causes. To begin on leaving college, with 
legitimate book-making — writing novels, tales, volumes of poetry, 
&c., you must have at least five years' support from some other 
source^ for, until you get a name, nothing you could write would 
pay "board and lodging;" and ''getting a name" in America, 
implies having first got a name in England. Then we have 
almost no professed, mere authors. They have vocations of some 
other character, also. Men like Dana, Bryant, Sprague, Halleck, 
Kennedy, Wetmore, though, no doubt, it is the first wish of their 
hearts to devote all their time to literature, are kept, by our 
atrocious laws of copyright, in paths less honorable to their 
country, but more profitable to themselves ; and by far the great- 
est number of discouraged authors are " broken on the wheel" 
of the public press. Gales, Walsh, Chandler, Buckingham, and 
other editors of that stamp, are men driven aside from authorship, 
their proper vocation. 

Periodical writing seems the natural novitiate to literary fame 
in our country, and I understand from your mother that through 
this lies your chosen way. I must try to give you as clear an 
idea as possible of the length and breadth of it, and perhaps I 
can best do so by contrasting it with another career, which (if 
advice were not always useless) I should sooner advise. 

Your mother's farm, then, consisting of near a hundred acres, 
gives a net produce of about five hundred dollars a year — hands 
paid, I mean, and seed, wear and tear of tools, team, <fec., first 



FARMING AND AUTHORSHIP. 191 



subtracted. She has lived as comfortable as usual for the last 
three or four year?, and still contrived to lay by the two hundred 
and fifty dollars expended annually on your education. Were 
you at home, your own labor and oversight would add rather 
more than two hundred dollars to the income, and with good 
luck you might call yourself a farmer with five hundred dollars, 
as the Irish say, '' to the fore.'' Your vocation,- at the same 
time, is dignified, and such as would reflect favorably on your 
reputation, should you hereafter become in any way eminent. 
During six months in the year, you would scarce find more than 
an hour or two in the twenty-four to spare from sleep or labor ; 
but, in the winter months, with every necessary attention to your 
affairs out of doors, still find as much leisure for study and 
composition as most literary men devote to those purposes. I 
say nothing of the pahulum of rural influences on your mind, but 
will just hint at another incidental advantage you may not have 
thought of, viz : that the public show much more alacrity in 
crowninor' an author, if he does not make bread and butter of the 
laurels ! In other words, if you are a farmer, you are supposed 
(by a world not very brilliant in its conclusions) to expend the 
most of your mental energies (as they do) in making your living ; 
and your literature go€s for an '' aside" — waste- water, as the 
millers phrase it — a very material premise in both criticism and 
public estimation. 

At your age, the above picture would have been thrown awaj 
on myself, and I presume (inviting as it seems to my world- wearj 
eyes) it is thrown away now upon you. I shall therefore try tc 
present to you the lights and shadows of the picture which seea 
to you more attractive. 



192 LETTER XXl. 



Your first step will be to select New York as the eity which is 
to be illustrated by your residence, and to commence a search 
after some literary occupation. You have a volume of poetry 
which has been returned to you by your ^' literary agent/' with a 
heavy charge for procuring the refusal of every publisher to 
undertake it ; and, with your pride quite taken out of you, you are 
willing to devote your Latin and Greek, your acquaintance with 
prosody and punctuation, and a very middling proficiency in 
chirography (no offence — your mother showed me your auto- 
graph list of bills for the winter term)— all this store of accom- 
phshment you offer to employ for a trifle besides meat, lodging, 
and apparel. These, you say, are surely moderate expectations 
for an educated man, and such wares, so cheap, must find a 
ready market. Of such stuff, you know that editors are made ; 
and, in the hope of finding a vacant editorial chair, you pocket 
your MSS., and commence inquiry. At the end of the month, 
you begin to think yourself the one person on earth for whom 
there seems no room. There is no editor wanted, no sub-editor 
wanted, no reporter, no proof-reader, no poet ! There are passa- 
ble paragraphists by scores — educated young men, of every kind, 
of promising talent, who, for twenty dollars a month, would joy- 
fully do twice what you propose — give twice as much time, and 
furnish twice as much " copy." But as you design, of course^ to 
''go into society," and gather your laurels as they blossom, you 
cannot see your way very clearly with less than a hay-maker's 
wages. You proceed with your inquiries, however, and are, at 
last, quite convinced that few things are more difficult than to 
coin uncelebrated brains into current money — that the avenues 
for the employment of the head, only^ are emulously crowded-** 



SUBSISTENCE OF AUTHORS. 193 



that there are many more than you had supposed who have the 
same object as yourself, and that, whatever fame may be in its 
meridian and close, its morning is mortification and starvation. 

The "small end of the horn" has a hole in it, however, and 
the bitter stage of experience I have just described, might be 
omitted in your history, if, by any other means, you could be 
made small enough to go in. The most considerable diminution 
of size, perhaps, is the getting rid, for the time, of all idea of 
" living like a gentleman," (according to the common acceptation 
of the phrase.) To be willing to satisfy hunger in any clean and 
honest way, to sleep in any clean and honest place, and to wear 
anything clean and honestly paid for, are phases of the crescent 
moon of fame, not very prominently laid down in our imaginary 
chart ; but they are, nevertheless, the first indication of that 
moon's waxing, I see by the advertisements, that there are 
facilities now for cheap living, which did not exist " when George 
the Third was king." A dinner (of beef, bread, and potatoes, 
with a bottle of wme) is offered, by an advertiser, of the savory 
name of Goslin, for a shilling, and a breakfast, most invitingly 
described, is offered for sixpence. I have no doubt a lodging; 
might be procured at the same modest rate of charge. " Socie- 
ty" does not move on this plane, it is true, but society is not 
worth seeking at any great cost, while you are obscure ; and, if 
you'll wait till the first moment when it would be agreeable, (the 
moment when it thinks it worth while to caress you,) it will 
come to you, like Mohammed to the mountain. And like the 
mountain's moving to Mohammed, you will find any premature 
ambition on the subject. 

Giving up the expectation of finding employment saUtfd to 

VOL. I, 9 



194 LETTER XXL 



your taste, you will, of course, be " open to offers ;'* and I should 
counsel you to take any that would pay, which did not positively 
shut the door upon literature. At the same wages, you had bet- 
ter direct covers in a newspaper office, than contribute original 
matter which costs you thought, yet is not appreciated ; and in 
fact, as I said before with reference to farming, a subsistence not 
dilectly obtained by brain-work, is a material advantage to an 
author. Eight hours of mere mechanical copying, and two hours 
of leisurely composition, will tire you less, and produce more for 
your reputation than twelve hours of intellectual drudgery. The 
pubhshers and booksellers have a good deal of work for educated 
men — proof-reading, compiling, corresponding, &c., and this is a 
good step to higher occupation. As you moderate your wants, 
of course you enlarge your chances for employment. 

Getting up in the world is like walking through a mist — ^your 
way opens as you get on. I should say that, with tolerable good 
fortune, you might make, by your pen, two hundred dollars the 
first year, and increase your income a hundred dollars annually, 
for five years. This, as a literary '^ operative." After that 
period, you would either remain stationary, a mere ^' workey," or 
your genius would discover, '^ by the dip of the divining-rod,'' 
where, in the well-searched bowels of literature, lay an unworked 
vein of ore. In the latter case, you would draw that one prize, 
in a thousand blanks, of which the other competitors in the lot- 
tery of fame feel as sure as yourself. 

As a " stock" or '* starring" player upon the literary stage, of 
course you desire a crowded audience ; and it is worth your while, 
perhaps, to inquire (more curiously than is laid down in most ad- 
'-'^-es to authors) what is the number and influence of the judi- 



USES OF FAULTS. 195 



cious, and what nuts it is politic to throw to the groundlings. 
Abuse is, in criticisro, what shade is in a picture, discord in har- 
mony, acid in punch, salt in seasoning. Unqualified praise is the 
death of Tarpeia, and to be neither praised nor abused is more 
than death — it is inanition. Query — how to procure yourself 
to be abused? In your chemical course next year, you will 
probably give a morning's attention to the analysis of the pearl, 
among other precious substances ; and you will be told by the 
professor, that it is the consequence of an excess of carbo- 
nate of lime in the flesh of the oyster — in other words, the disease 
of the sub-aqueous animal who produces it. Now, to copy this 
politic invalid — to learn wisdom of an oyster — find out what is 
the most pungent disease of your style, and hug it till it becomes 
a pearl. A fault carefully studied is the germ of a peculiarity ; 
and a peculiarity is a pearl of great price to an author. The 
critics begin very justly by hammering at it as a fault, and, after 
it is polished into a peculiarity, they still hammer at it as a fault, 
and the noise they make attracts attention to the pearl ; and up 
you come from the deep sea of obscurity, not the less intoxicated 
with the sunshine, because, but for your disease, you would never 
have seen it. 

[To the above may be added a passage on the same subject, written in 
another place :] 

YOUNa POETS. 

An old man with no friend but his money — a fair child holding 
the hand of a Magdalen — a delicate bride given over to a coarse- 
minded bridegroom — were sights to be troubled at seeing. We 
should bleed at heart to see either of them. But there is some- 



196 LETTER XXI. 



thing even more touching to us than these — something, too, 
which is the subject of heartless and habitual mockery by crit- 
ics — the first timid offerings, to fame, of the youthful and sanguine 
poet. We declare that we never open a letter from one of this 
class, never read a preface to the first book of one of them, nevei 
arrest our critical eye upon a blemish in the immature page, with- 
out having the sensation of a tear coined in our heart — nevei 
without a passionate, though inarticulate, '' God help you !" We 
know so well the rasping world in which they are to jostle, with 
then- *^ fibre of sarcenet T' We know so well the injustices, the re- 
buffs, the sneers, the insensibilities,/rom without — the impatiences, 
the resentments, the choked impulses and smothered heart-bound- 
ings within. And yet it is not these outward penances, and 
inward scorpions, that cause us the most regret in the fate of the 
poet. Out of these is born the inspired expression of his anguish — 
like the plaint of the singing bird from the heated needle which 
' blinds him. We mourn more over his fatuous imperviousness to 
counsel — over his haste to print, his slowness to correct — over his 
belief ^+liat the airy bridges he builds over the chasms in his logic 
and rhythm are passable, by avoirdupois on foot, as well as by 
Poesy on Pegasus. That the world is not as much enchanted — 
(that we ourselves are not as much touched and delighted) — with 
the halting flights of new poets as with the broken and short 
venturings in air of new-fledged birds — proves over agam that 
the world we live in were a good enough Eden, if human nature 
were as loveable as the rest. We wish it were not so. We wish 
it were natural to admire anything human -made, that has not cost 
pain and trial. But, since we do not, and can not, it is a pity, we 
say again, that beginners in poetry are offended with kind coun- 



TREATMENT OF YOUNG POETS. 197 



sel. Of the great many books and manuscript poems we receive, 
there is never one from a young poet, which we do not long, in 
all kindness, to send back to him to be restudied, rewritten, and 
made, in finish, more worthy of the conception. To praise it in 
print only puts his industry to sleep, and makes him dream he 
has achieved what is yet far beyond him. We ask the young 
poets who read this, where would be the kindness in such a 
case? 



THE FOUR RIVERS.* 

THE HUDSON — THE MOHAWK — THE CHENANaO — THE SUSQUEHANNAH. 

Some observer of Nature offered a considerable reward for two 
blades of striped grass exactly similar. The infinite diversity, of 
wbich tins is one instance, exists in a thousand other features of 
Nature, but in none more strikingly than in the scenery of rivers. 
What two in the world are alike ? How often does the attempt 
fail to compare the Hudson with the Rhine — the two, perhaps, 
among celebrated rivers, which are the nearest to a resemblance ? 
Yet looking at the first determination of a river's course, and the 
natural operation of its search for the sea, one would suppose 
that, in a thousand features, their valleys would scarce be dis- 
tinguishable. 

I think, of all excitements in the world, that of the first dis- 
covery and exploration of a noble river, must be the most eager 
and enjoyable. Fancy ''the bold Enghshman," as the Dutch 
called Hendrich Hudson, steering his httle yacht, the Halve-Mane, 

^ It was on the excursion here described, that the author first saw the 
spot which he afterwards made a residence, and where the foregoing letters 
were written, 



THE HUDSON. 199 



for the first time through the Highlands ! Imagine his anxiety 
for the channel, forgotten as he gazed up at the towering rocks, 
and round the green shores, and onward, past point and opening 
bend, miles away into the heart of the country ; yet with no les- 
sening of the glorious stream beneath him, and no decrease of 
promise in the bold and luxuriant shores ! Picture him lying at 
anchor below ISTewburgh, with the dark pass of the '' Wey-Gat" 
frowning behind him, the lofty and blue Cattskills beyond, and 
the hillsides around covered with the red lords of the soil, exhib- 
iting only less wonder than friendliness. And how beautifully was 
the assurance of welcome expressed, when the '' very kind old 
man" brought a bunch of arrows, and broke them before the 
stranger, to induce him to partake fearlessly of his hospitality ! 

The qualities of the Hudson are those most likely to impress a 
stranger. It chances felicitously that the traveller's first entrance 
beyond the sea-board is usually made by the steamer to Albany. 
The grand and imposing outlines of rock and horizon answer to 
his anticipations of the magnificence of a new world ; and if he 
finds smaller rivers and softer scenery beyond, it strikes him but 
as a slighter lineament of a more enlarged design. To the great 
majority of tastes, this, too, is the scenery to live among. The 
stronger lines of natural beauty affect most tastes ; and there are 
few who would select country residence by beauty at all, who 
would not sacrifice something to their preference for the neighbor- 
hood of sublime scenery. The quiet, the merely rural — a thread 
of a rivulet instead of a broad river — a small and secluded valley, 
rather than a wiis extent of view, bounded by bold mountains, is 
the choice of but few. The Hudson, therefore, stands usually 



\ 



200 THE FOUR RIVERS. 



foremost in men's aspirations for escape from the tm*moil of cities ; 
but, to my taste, though there are none more desirable to see, 
there are sweeter rivers to hve upon. 

I made one of a party, very lately, bound upon a rambling ex- 
cursion up and down some of the river-courses of New York. We 
had anticipated empty boats, and absence of all the gay company 
usually found radiating from the city in June, and had made up 
our minds for once to be contented with the study of inanimate 
nature. Never were wiseheads more mistaken. Our kind friend, 
Captain Dean, of the Stevens, stood by his plank when we ar- 
rived, doing his best to save the lives of the female portion of the 
crowd rushing on board ; and never, in the most palmy days of 
the prosperity of our country, have we seen a greater number of 
people on board a boat, nor a stronger expression* of that busy 
and thriving haste, which is thought to be an exponent of na- 
tional industry. How those varlets of newsboys contrive to 
escape in time, or escape at all, from being crushed or carried off; 
how everybody's baggage gets on board, and everybody's wife 
and child ; how the hawsers are slipped, and the boat got under 
way, in such a crowd and such a crush, are matters understood, 
I suppose, by Providence and the captain of the Stevens — but 
they are beyond the comprehension of the passenger. 

Having got out of hearing of " Here's the Star !" '' Buy the 
old Major's paper, sir!" *' Here's the Express!" ''Buy the 
New-Ery .^" '' Would you like a New-Era, sir ?" '' Take a Sun, 
miss?" and a hundred such deafening cries, to which New York 
has of late years become subject, we drew breath and compara- 
tive silence off the green shore of Hoboken, thanking Heaven for 



THE MOHAWK. 201 



even the repose of a steamboat, after the babel of a metropolis. 
Stillness, like all other things, is relative. 

The passage of the Hudson is doomed to be be- written, and we 
will not again swell its great multitude of describers. Bound 
onward, we but gave a glance, in passing, to romantic Undercliff 
and Cro'-Kest, hallowed by the most imaginative poetry our coun- 
try has yet committed to immortality ;^ gave our malison to the 
black smoke of iron-works defacing the green mantle of Nature, 
and our benison to every dweller on the shore who has painted his 
fence white, and smoothed his lawn to the river ; and, sooner 
than we used to do by some five or six hours, (ere railroads had 
supplanted the ploughing and crawling coaches to Schenectady,) we 
fed our eyes on the slumbering and broad valley of theMohawk. 

How startled must be the Naiad of this lovely river to find her 
willowy form embraced between railroad and canal — one intruder 
on either side of the bed so sacredly overshaded ! Pity but there 
were a new knight of La Mancha to avenge the hamadryads and 
water-nymphs of their wrongs from wood- cutters and contractors ! 
Where sleep Pan and vengeful Oread, when a Yankee settler 
hews me dov/n twenty wood-nymphs of a morning ? There He 
their bodies, limbless trimks, on the banks of the Mohawk, yet no 
Dutchman stands sprouting into leaves near by, nor woollen jacket 
turning into bark, as in the retributive olden time ! We are aban- 
doned of these gods of Arcady ! They like not^ the smoke of 
steam funnels ! 

Talking of smoke reminds me of ashes. Is there no way of 
frequenting railroads without the loss of one's eyes? Must one 

» Drake's " Culprit Fay." 



202 THE FOUR RIVERS. 



pay for velocity as dearly as Cacus for his oxen ? Really, this 
new invention is a blessing — to the oculists ! Ten thousand small 
crystals of carbon cutting right and left among the fine vessels 
and delicate membranes of the eye, and all this amid glorious 
scenery, where to go bandaged, (as needs must,) is to slight the 
master-work of Nature ! Either run your railroads away from 
the river-courses, gentlemen contractors, or find some other place 
than your passengers' eyes to bestow your waste ashes ! I have 
heard of *'hes in smiles,'' but there's a lye in tears, that touches 
the sensibilities more nearly ! 

There is a drowsy beauty in these German flats that seems 
strangely profaned by a smoky monster whisking along twenty 
miles in the hour. The gentle canal-boat was more homogene- 
ous to the scene. The hills lay off from the river in easy and 
sleepy curves, and the amber Mohawk creeps down over its 
shallow gravel with a deliberateness altogether and abominably 
out of tune with the iron rails. Perhaps it is the rails out of 
tune with the river — but any way there is a discord. I am con- 
tent to see the Mohawk, canal, and railroad inclusive, but once a 
year. 

We reached the head- waters of the Chenango River, by what 
Miss Martineau celebrates as an " exclusive extra," in an after- 
noon's ride from Utica. The latter thrifty and hospitable town 
was as redolent of red bricks and sunshine as usual; and the^ 
streets, to my regret, had grown no narrower. They who laid 
out the future legislative capital of New York, must have been 
lovers of winter's wind and summer's sun. They forgot the 
troubles of the near-sighted ; (it requires spectacles to read the 
signs or see the shops from one side to the other ;) they forgot 



THE CHENANGO. 203 



the perils of old women and children in the wide crossings ; they 
forgot the pleasures of shelter and shade, of neighborly vis-a-vk, 
of comfortahle-loolcingness, I maintain that Utica is not a com- 
fortable-looking town. It affects me like the clown in the panto- 
mime, when he sits do^\Ti without bending his legs — by mere 
straddling. I would not say anything so ungracious if it. 
were not to suggest a remedy — a shady mall up and down the 
middle! What a beautiful town it would be — like an old-fash- 
ioned shirt bosom, with a frill of elms ! Your children would 
walk safely within the rails, and your country neighbors would 
expose their " sa'ace," and cool their tired oxen in the shade. 
We felt ourselves compensated for paying nearly double price for 
our " extra," by the remarkable alacrity with which the coach 
came to the door after the bargain was concluded, and the polite- 
ness with which the '* gentleman who made out the way-bill,'' 
acceded to our stipulation. He bowed us off, expressed his 
happiness to serve us, and away we went. 

The Chenango, one of the largest tributaries to the Susquehan- 
nah, began to show itself, like a small brook, some fifteen or 
twenty miles from Utica. Its course lay directly south, and the 
new canal kept along its bank, as deserted, but a thousand times 
less beautiful in its loneliness, than the river whose rambling 
curves it seemed made to straighten. We were not in the best 
humor, for our double-priced " extra" turned out to be the regu- 
lar stage ; and, while we were delivering and waiting for mailsj 
and taking in passengers, the troop of idlers at tavern-doors 
amused themselves with reading the imaginative production called 
our '* extra way-bill," as it was transferred, with a sagacious wink, 
from one driver's hat to the other. I thought of Paddy^s sedan- 



204 THE FOUR RIVERS. 



chair, with the bottom out. '' If it were not for the name of the 
thing/' said he, as he. trotted along with a box over his head. 

I say we were not in the best of humors with our prompt and 
pohte friend at Utica, but, even through these bihous spectacles, 
the Chenango was beautiful. Its valley is wide and wild, and 
the reaches of the capricious stream, through the farms and woods 
along which it loiters, were among the prettiest effects of water 
scenery I have ever met. There is a strange loneliness about it ; 
and the small towns which were sprinkled along the hundred 
miles of its course, seem rather the pioneers into a western wil- 
derness, than settlements so near the great thoroughfare to the 
lakes. It is a delicious valley to travel through, barring '^ cordu- 
roy ^ Tre-men-dous ! exclaims the traveller, as the coach drops 
into a pit between two logs, and surges up again — Heaven only 
knows how. And, as my fellow-passenger remarked, it is a 
wonder the road does not echo — " tree-mend~us P^ 

Five miles before reaching the Susquehannah, the road began 
to mend, the hills and valleys assumed the smile of cultivation, 
and the scenery before us took a bolder and broader outline 
The Chenango came down full and sunny to her junction, like 
the bride, who is most lovely when just losing her virgin name, 
and pouring the wealth of her whole existence into the bosom 
of another ; and untroubled with his new burden, the lordly Sus- 
quehannah kept on his majestic way, a type of such vainly- 
dreaded, but easily-borne responsibilities. 

At Binghamton, we turned our course down the Susquehan- 
nah. This delicious word, in the Indian tongue, describes its 
peculiar and constant windings ; and I venture to say that on no 
river in the world are the grand and beautiful in scenery so glori- 



THE SUSQUEHANNAH. 205 



ously mixed. The road to Owego follows the course of the valley 
rather than of the river, but the silver curves are constantly in 
view ; and, from every shght elevation, the majestic windings are 
seen — like the wanderings of a vein, gleaming through green 
fringes of trees, and circling the bright islands which occasionally 
divide their waters. It is a swift river, and singularly living and 
joyous in its expression. 

At Owego there is a remarkable combination of bold scenery 
and habitable plain. One of those small, bright rivers, which 
are called " creeks'^ in this country, comes in with its valley at 
right angles to the vale and stream of the Susquehannah, form- 
ing a star with three rays, or a plain with three radiating valleys, 
or a city, (in the future, perhaps,) with three magnificent exits and 
entrances. The angle is a round mountain, some four or five 
hundred feet in height, which kneels fairly down at the meeting 
of the two streams, while another round mountain, of an easy 
acclivity, lifts gracefully from the opposite bank, as if rising from 
the same act of homage to E'ature. Below the town and 
above it, the mountains, for the first time, give in to the exact 
shape of the river's short and capricious course ; and the plain 
on which the town stands is enclosed between two ampitheatres 
of lofty hills, shaped with the regularity and even edge of a coli- 
seum, and resembling the two halves of a leaf-lined vase, struck 
apart by a twisted wand of silver. 

Owego creek"^ should have a prettier name, for its small vale 
is the soul and essence of loveliness. A meadow of a mile in 

* The author's subsequent residence was upon this stream, about half a 
mile above its junction with the Susquehannah. 



206 THE FOUR RIVERS. 



breadth, fertile, soft, and sprinkled with stately trees, furnishes a 
bed for its swift windings ; and, from the edge of this new Tempe, 
on the southern side, rise three steppes, or natural terraces, over the 
highest of which the forest rears its head, and looks in upon the 
meeting of the rivers, while down the sides, terrace by terrace, 
leap the small streamlets from the mountain-springs, forming 
each again its own smaller dimple in this loveliest face of Nature. 
There are more romantic, wilder places than this in the world, 
but none on earth more hahitahly beautiful. In these broad 
valleys, where the grain-fields, and the meadows, and the sunny 
farms, are walled in by glorious mountain sides -not obtrusively 
near, yet, by their noble and wondrous outlines, giving a perpetual 
refreshment, and an hourly- changing feast to the eye — in thesa 
valleys, d, man's household gods yearn for an altar. Here are 
mountains that, to look on but once, ''become a feeling" — a river 
at whose grandeur to marvel — and a hundred streamlets to lace 
about the heart. Here are fertile fields, nodding with grain ; " a 
thousand cattle'' grazing on the hills — here is assembled together, 
in one wondrous centre, a specimen of every most loved linea- 
ment of Nature. Here would I have a home ! Give me a cot- 
tage by one of these shining streamlets — upon one of these 
terraces, that seem steps to Olympus ; and let me ramble over 
these mountain sides, while my flowers are growing, and my head 
silvering in tranquil happiness. He whose Penates would not 
root ineradicably here, has no heart for a home, nor senses for 
the glory of Nature ! 



LETTER 

TO THE UNKNOWN PURCHASER AND NEXT OCCUPANT OF GLENMARY.* 

Sir : In selling you the dew and sunshine ordained to fall, here- 
after, on this bright spot of earth — the waters on their way to this 
sparkling brook — the tints mixed for the flowers of that enamel- 
led meadow, and the songs bidden to be sung in coming summers 
by the feathery builders in Glenmary, I know not whether to 
wonder more at the omnipotence of money, or at my own imper- 
tinent audacity toward Nature. How you can huy the right to 
exclude, at will, every other creature made in God's image, from 
sitting by this brook, treading on that carpet of flowers, or lying 
listening to the birds in the shade of these glorious trees — how I 
can sell it you, is a mystery not understood by the Indian, and 
dark, I must say, to me. 

*' Lord of the soil/' is a title which conveys your privileges 
but poorly. You are master of waters flowing, at this moment, 
perhaps, in a river of Judea, or floating in clouds over some 

* Circumstances compelled the author to give up his hopes of seclusion, 
and return to his profession in the city, after about five yeais' residence at 
Glenmary. 



208 LETTER. 



spicy island of the tropics, bound hither after many changes. 
There are hhes and violets ordered for you in millions, acres of 
sunshine ill daily instalments, and dew, nightly, in proportion. 
There are throats to be tuned with song, and wings to be painted 
with red and gold, blue and yellow — thousands of them, and all 
tributaries to you. Your corn is ordered to be sheathed in silk, 
and lifted high to the sun. Your grain is to be duly bearded 
and stemmed. There is perfume distilling for your clover, and 
juices for your grasses and fruits. Ice will be here for your 
wine, shade for your refreshment at noon, breezes and showers 
and snow-flakes ; all in their season, and all '' deeded to you for 
forty dollars the acre ! Gods ! what a copyhold of p^'operty for 
a fallen world !'' 

Mine has been but a short lease of this lovely and well-en- 
dowed domain ; (the duration of a smile of fortune, five years, 
scarce longer than a five-act play ;) but, as in a play we some- 
times live through a life, it seems to me that I have lived a life 
at Glenmary. Allow me this, and then you must allow me the 
privilege of those who, at the close of life, leave something be- 
hind them : that of writing out my will. Though I depart this 
Ufe, I would fain, like others, extend my ghostly hand into the 
future ; and, if wings are to be borrowed or stolen where I go, 
you may rely on my hovering around and haunting you, in visi- 
tations not restricted by cock- crowing. 

Trying to look at Glenmary through your eyes, sir, I see, too 
plainly, that I have not shaped my ways as if expecting a suc- 
cessor in my lifetime. I did not, I am free to own. I thought 
to have shuffled off my mortal coil tranquilly here ; flitting, at last, 
in company with some troop of my autumn leaves, or some bevy 



SPARE TUE TREES. 109 



of Spring blossoms, or with snow in the thaw — my tenants at my 
back, as a landlord may say. I have counted on a life-interest 
in the trees, trimming them accordingly ; and in the squirrels and 
birds, encouraging them to chatter and build and fear nothing— ^^^ 
no guns permitted on the premises. I have had my will of thi*. 
beautiful stream. I have carved the woods into a shape of my 
liking. I have propagated the despised sumach and the perse- 
cuted hemlock and "pizen laurel." And "no end to the weeds 
dug up and set out again," as one of my neighbors delivers him- 
self. I have built a bridge over Glenmary brook, which the 
town looks to have kept up by " the place," and we have plied 
free ferry over the river, I and my man Tom, till the neighbors, 
from the daily saving of the two miles round, have got the trick 
of it. And, betwixt the aforesaid Glenmary brook and a certain 
muddy and plebeian gutter formerly permitted to join company 
with, and pollute it, I have procured a divorce at much trouble 
and pains — a guardian duty entailed of course on my suc- 
cessor. 

First of all, sir, let me plead for the old trees of Glenmary ! 
Ah ! those friendly old trees ! The cottage stands belted in with 
them — a thousand visible from the door — and with stems and 
branches worthy of the great valley of the Susquehannah. For 
how much music, played without thanks, am I indebted to those 
leaf-organs of changing tones ? for how many whisperings of 
thought breathed like oracles in my ear ? for how many new shapes 
of beauty moulded in the leaves by the wind ? for how much com- 
panionship, solace, and welcome ? Steadfast and constant is the 
countenance of such friends — God be praised for their staid wel- 
come and sweet fidelity ! If I love them better than some things 



210 ' LETTER. 



liuman, it is no fault of ambitiousness in the trees. They stand 
where they did. But, in recoiling from mankind, one may find 
them the next kindliest things ; and be glad of dumb friendship. 
Spare those old trees, gentle sir ! 

In the smooth walk which encircles the meadow, betwixt that 
solitary Olympian sugar-maple and the margin of the river, dwells 
a portly and venerable toad, who, (if I may venture to bequeath 
you my friends,) must be commended to your kindly consideration. 
Though a squatter, he was noticed in our first rambles along the 
stream, five years since, for his ready civility in yielding the way ; 
not hurriedly, however, nor with an obsequiousness unbecoming 
a republican, but deliberately and just enough ; sitting quietly 
on the grass till our passing by gave him room again on the warm 
and trodden ground. Punctually, after the April cleansing of 
the walk, this 'jewelled" hahituey from his indifferent lodgings hard 
by, emerges to take his pleasure in the sun ; and there, at any 
hour when a gentleman is likely to be abroad, you may find him, 
patient on his os coccygis, or vaulting to his asylum of high grass. 
This year, he shows, I am grieved to remark, an ominous obesity, 
likely to render him obnoxious to the female eye ; and, with the 
trimness of his shape, has departed much of that measured 
alacrity which first won our regard. He presumes a little on 
your allowance for old age ; and, with this pardonable weakness 
growing upon him, it seems but right that his position and stand- 
ing should be tenderly made known to any new-comer on the 
premises. In the cutting of the next grass, slice me not up my 
fat friend, sir ! nor set your cane down heedlessly in his modest 
domain. He is '' mine ancient/' and I would fain do him a good 
turn with you. 



SPARE THE BIRDS. 211 



For my spoiled family of squirrels, sir , I crave nothing but im- 
munity from powder and shot. They require coaxing to come 
on the same side of the tree with you ; and, though saucy to me. 
I observe that they commence acquaintance invariably with a safe 
mistrust. One or two of them have suffered, it is true, from too 
hasty a confidence in my greyhound, Maida, but the beauty of 
that gay fellow was a trap against which Nature had furnished 
them with no warning instinct ! (A fact, sir, which would pret- 
tily point a moral !) The large hickory on the edge of the lawn, 
and the black walnut over the shoulder of the flower-garden, 
have been, through my dynasty, sanctuaries inviolate for squir- 
rels. I pray you, sir, let them not be '' reformed out," under 
your administration. 

Of our feathered connections and friends, we are most bound 
to a pair of Phebe-birds and a merry bob-o-link — the first 
occupying the top of the young maple near the door of the cot- 
tage, and the latter executing his bravuras upon the clump of 
alder-bushes in the meadow ; though, in common with many a 
gay-plumaged gallant like himself, his whereabout after dark is 
a mystery. He comes, every year, from his rice plantation 
in Florida, to pass the summer at Glenmary. Pray keep him 
safe from percussion- caps, and let no urchin with a long pole 
poke down our trusting Phebes ; annuals in that same tree for 
three summers. There are humming-birds, too, whom we have 
complimented and looked sweet upon, but they can not be identi- 
fied from morning to morning. And there is a golden oriole who 
sings, through May, on a dog- wood tree by the brook- side ; but he 
has fought shy of our crumbs and coaxing, and let him go ! We 
are mates for his betters, with all his gold livery ! With these 



212 LETTER. 



reservations, sir, I commend the birds to your friendship and kind 
keeping. 

And now, sir, I have nothing else to ask, save only your 
watchfulness over the small nook reserved from this purchase of 
seclusion and loveliness. In the shady depths of the small glen 
above you, among the wild flowers and music — the music of the 
brook babbling over rocky steps — is a spot sacred to love and 
memory. Keep it inviolate, and as much of the happiness of 
Glenmary as we can leave behind, stay with you for recompense ! 



GLENMAKY POEMS. 



[As other exponents of the influences under which the foregoing portion 
A the author's writings were penned, perhaps the four following poems, 
written amid the seclusion of Glenmary, should rather be introduced here 
than elsewhere in his works.] 



THOUGHTS 

WHILE MAKING THE GRAYE OF A ITEW-BORN" CHILD. 

KooM, gentle flowers ! my child would pass to heaven ! 

Ye look'd not for her yet, with your soft eyes. 

Oh, watchful ushers at Death's narrow door ! 

But lo ! while you delay to let her forth, 

Angels, beyond, stay for her ! One long kiss. 

From lips all pale with agony, and tears. 

Wrung after anguish had dried up with fire 

The eyes that wept them, were the cup of life 

Held as a welcome to her. Weep ! oh mother ! 

But not that from this cup of bitterness 

A cherub of the sky has turned away. 

One look upon thy face ere thou depart ! 

My daughter ! it is soon to let thee go ! 

My daughter ! with thy birth has gush'd a spring 

I knew not of — filling my heart with tears. 

And turning with strange tenderness to thee — 

A love — oh God ! it seems so— that must flow 



216 GLENMARY POEMS. 



Far as thou fleest, and, 'twixt heaven ani me. 

Henceforward, be a bright and yearning chain 

Drawing me after thee ! And so, farewell ! 

'Tis a harsh world, in which affection knows 

No place to treasure up its loved and lost 

But the foul grave ! Thou, who, so late, wast sleeping 

Warm in the close fold of a mother's heart. 

Scarce from her breast a single pulse receiving 

But it was sent thee with some tender thought, 

How can I leave thee — here ! Alas for man ! 

The herb in its humility may fall, 

And waste into the bright and genial air. 

While we — by hands that minister 'd in life 

Nothing but love to us— -are thrust away — 

The earth flung in upon our just cold bosoms, 

And the warm sunshine trodden out forever ! 

Yet I have chosen for thy grave, my child, 
A bank where I have lain in summer hours, 
And thought how little it w^ould seem like death 
To sleep amid such lovehness. The brook. 
Tripping with laughter down the rocky steps 
That lead up to thy bed, would still trip on, 
Breaking the dread hush of the mourners gone ; 
The birds are never silent that build here. 
Trying to sing down the more vocal waters ; 
The slope is beautiful with moss and flowers. 
And far below, seen under arching leaves. 
Glitters the warm sun on the village spire, 



GLENMARY POEMS. 217 



Pointing the living after tliee. And this 
Seems Uke a comfort ; and, replacing now 
The flowers that have made room for thee, I go 
To whisper the same peace to her who lies — 
Robb'd of her child and lonely. 'Tis the work 
Of many a dark hour, and of many a prayer. 
To bring the heart back from an infant gone. 
Hope must give o'er, and busy fancy blot 
The images from all the silent rooms ; 
And every sight and sound familiar to her 
Undo its sweetest link — ^and so at last 
The fountain— that; once struck, must flow forever—- 
Will hide and waste in silence. When the smile 
Steals to her palHd lip again, and Spring 
Wakens the buds above thee, we will come. 
And, standing by thy music-haunted grave, 
Look on each other cheerfully, and say : 
A child that we have loved is gone to heave% 
And hy this gate of flowers she pass'd away ! 



VOL. I. Id 



THE INVOLUNTARY PRAYER OF 
HAPPINESS. 

I HAVE enougli, oh God ! My heart, to-night. 
Runs over with its fullness of content ; 
And« as I look out on the fragrant stars. 
And from the beauty of the night take in 
My priceless portion— yet myself no more 
Than in the universe a grain of sand— 
I feel His gloiy who could make a world. 
Yet, in the lost depths of the wilderness. 
Leave not a flower imperfect ! 

Rich, though poor ! 
My low-roofed cottage is, this hour, a heaven 
Music is in it— and the song she sings. 
That sweet- voiced wife of mine, arrests the ^ear 
Of my young child, awake upon her knee ; 
And, with his calm eye on his master's face, 
My noble hound Ues couchant : and all here—? 
All in this little home, yet boundless heaven- 
Are, in such love as I have power to give, 
Blessed to overflowing ! 



GLENXAi 



EM5. 



■219 



G:.i; -i: zz-^i-r. 



T: :t1 

To I- 






A To: 



:: rr^zc^enitiai!, be, to her, 
iri' 'iT~2zd, and s 's.iii) 



A THOUGHT OVER A CRADLE. 

I SADDEN when thou smilest to my smile. 
Child of my love ! I tremble to believe 
That, o'er the mirror of that eye of blue, 
The shadow of my heart will always pass ; 
A heart that, from its struggle with the world, 
Comes nightly to thy guarded cradle home, 
And, careless of the staining dust it brings. 
Asks for its idol ! Strange, that flowers of earth 
Are visited by every air that stirs, 
And drink in sweetness only, while the child. 
That shuts within its breast a bloom for heaven. 
May take a blemish from the breath of love. 
And bear the blio^ht forever. 

I have wept 
With gladness at the gift of this fair child ! 
My life is bound up in her. But, oh God ! 
Thou know'st how heavily my heart at times 
Bears its sweet burthen ; and if thou hast given. 



GLENMARY POEMS. 221 



To nurture sucli as mine, this spotless flower, 
To bring it unpolluted unto thee, 
TaJce thou its love, I pray thee ! Give it light- 
Though, following the sun, it turn from me ! — 
But, by the chord thus wrung, and by the light 
Shining about her, draw me to my child ! 
A.nd link us close^, oh God, when near to heaven ! 



THE MOTHER TO HER CHILD. 

They tell me thou art come from a far world, 
Babe of my bosom ! that these little arms, 
Whose restlessness is like the spread of wings. 
Move with the memory of flights scarce o'er — 
That through these fringed lids we see the soul 
Steep'd in the blue of its remembered home ; 
And, while thou sleep'st, come messengers, they say, 
Whispering to thee — and 'tis then I see, 
Upon thy baby lips, that smile of heaven ! 

And what is thy far errand, my fair child ! 
Why away, wandering from a home of bliss. 
To find thy way through darkness home again ! 
Wert thou an untried dweller in the sky ? 
Is there, betwixt the cherub that thou wert— 
The cherub and the angel thou mayst be — 
A life's probation in this sadder world ? 
Art thou, with memory of two things only. 
Music and light, left upon earth astray, 
And, by the watchers at the gate of heaven. 
Looked for with fear and trembling ? 



GLENMARY POEMS, ' 223 



Thou, who look'st 
Upon my brimming heart this tranquil eve, 
Knowest its fullness, as thou dost the dew 
Sent to the hidden violet by Thee ! 
And, as that flower, from its unseen abode, 
Sends its sweet breath up duly to the sky, 
Changing its gift to incense — so, oh God ! 
May the sweet drops, that to my humble cup 
Find their far way from heaven, send back, in prayer. 
Fragrance at thy throne welcome I 



OPEN-AIR MUSINGS 



IN THE CITY 



10* 



MUSINGS. 

From the window at which I sit, I look directly on the most 
frequented portion in Broadway — the sidewalk in front of 
St. PauVs, You walk over it every day. Familiarity with 
most things alters their aspect, however. Let me, after long ac- 
quaintance with this bit of sidewalk, sketch how it looks to me at 
the various hours of the day. I may jot down, also, one or two 
trifles I have observed while looking into the street in the inter- 
vals of writing. 

Mght in the morning, — The sidewalk is comparatively deserted. 
The early clerks have gone by, and the bookkeepers and youngei 
partners not being abroad, the current sets no particular way. A 
vigorous female exerciser or two may be seen returning from a 
smart walk to the Battery, and the orange-women are getting 
their tables ready at the corners. There is to be a funeral in the 
course of the day in St. Paul's church-yard, and one or two bojs 
are on the coping of the iron fence, watching the grave-digger. 
Seamstresses and scholmistresses, with veils down, in impenetra- 
ble incognito, hurry by with a step which says unmistakeabiy, 
''Don't look at me in this dress !" The return omnibuses come 
from Wall street empty, on a walk. 



228 MUSINGS. 



Nine and after. — A rapid throng of well-dressed men, all walk- 
ing smartly, and all bound Mammon-ward. Glanced at vaguely, 
the sidewalk seems like a floor with a swarm of black beetles run- 
ning races across it. The single pedestrians who are struggling 
up stream, keep close to the curbstone or get rudely jostled. The 
omnibuses all stop opposite St. Paul's at this hour, letting out 
passengers, who invariably start on a trot down Ann street or 
Fulton. The Museum people are on the top of the building 
drawing their flags across Broadway and Ann, by pulleys fastened 
to trees and chimneys. Burgess and Stringer hanging out their 
literary placards, with a listless deliberation, as if nobody was 
abroad yet who had leisure to read them. 

Twelve and after, — Discount-seekers crowding into the Chem- 
ical Bank with hats over their eyes. Flower-merchants setting 
their pots of roses and geraniums along the iron fence. The 
blind beggar arrived, and set with his back against the church 

Ue by an old woman. And now the streaks, drawn across my 
side vision by the passers under, glide at a more leisurely pace, 
and are of gayer hues. The street full of sunshine. Omnibuses 
going slowly, both ways. Female exclusives gliding to and fro 
in studiously plain dresses, and with very occupied air — (never in 
Broadway without '' the carriage," of course, except to shop.) 
Strangers sprinkled in couples, exhausting their strength and 
spirits by promenading before the show hour. The grave dug in 
St. Paul's, and the grave-digger gone home to dinner. Woman 
run over at the Fulton crossing. Boys out of school. Tombs' 
bell ringing fire in the tliird district. 

One and after. — The ornamentals are abroad. A crowd on St. 



BROADWAY, 229 



PauFs sidewalk, watching the accomphshed canary-bird, whose 
cage hangs on the fence. He draws his seed and water up an 
inchned plane in a rail- car, and does his complicated feeding to 
the great approbation of his audience. The price is high — his 
value being in proportion (aristocracy- wise) to his wants ! It is 
the smoothest and broadest sidewalk in Broadway — the frontage 
of St. Paul's — and the ladies and dandies walk most at their ease 
just here, loitering a little, perhaps, to glance at the flowers for 
sale. My window, commanding this ^avi^ is a particularly good 
place, therefore, to study street habits, and I have noted a trifle 
or so, that, if not new, may be newly put down. I observe that a 
very well-dressed woman is noticed by none so much as by the 
women themselves. This is the week for the first spring dresses, 
and, to-day, there is a specimen or two of Miss Lawson's April ava- 
tar, taking its first sun on the promenade. A lady passed, just now, 
with a charming straw hat and primrose shawl — not a very pretty 
woman, but, dress and all, a fresh and sweet object to look at — 
like a new-blown cowslip, that stops you in your walk, though it 
is not a violet. E"ot a male eye observed her, from curb -stone 
in Yesey to curb -stone in Fulton, but everij woinan turned to look 
after her ! Query, is this the notice of envy or admiration ; and, 
if the former, is it desirable or worth the pains and money of 
toilet? Query, again — the men's notice being admiration (not 
envy) what vjUI attract it, and is that (v/hatever it is) worth 
while ? I query what I should, myself, like to know. 

Half past three.— The sidewalk is in shade. The orange-man 
sits on a lemon-box, with his legs and arms all crossed together 
in his lap, listening to the band who have just commenced play- 
irg in the Museum balcony. The principal listeners, who have 



230 MUSINGS. 



stopped for nothing but to listen, are three negro boys, (one sit- 
ting on the Croton hydrant, and the other two leaning on his 
back,) and to them this gratuitous music seems a charming dis- 
pensation. (Tune, '^ Ole Dan Tucker. '') The omnibus horse<!i 
prick up their ears in going under the trumpets, but evidently feel 
that to show fright would be a luxury beyond their means. Sad- 
dle-horse, tied at the bank, breaks bridle and runs away. Three 
is universal dinner time for bosses — (what other word expresses 
the head men of all trades and professions?) — and probably 
not a single portly man will pass under my window in this 
hour. 

Four to Jive. — Sidewalk more crowded. Hotel boarders 
lounging along with toothpicks. Stout men going down toward 
Wall street with coats unbuttoned. Hearse stopped at St. Paul's, 
and the Museum band playing, '' Take your time, Miss Lucy," 
while the mourners are getting out. A gentleman, separated from 
two ladies by the passing of the coffin across the sidewalk, rejoins 
them, apparently with some funny remark. Bell tolls. No one 
in the crowd is interested to inquire the age or sex of the person 
breaking the current of Broadway to pass to the grave. Hearse 
drives off on a trot. 

Five and after. — Broadway one gay procession. Few ladies 
accompanied by gentlemen — fewer than in the promenades of 
any other coimtry. Men in couples and women in couples. 
Dandies strolling and stealing an occasional look at their loose 
demi'Saison pantaloons and gaiter-shoes, newly sported with the 
sudden advent of warm weather. ISTo private carriage passing, 
except those bound to the ferries for a drive into the country. 
The crowd is unlike the morning crowd. There is as much or 



BROADWAY 231 



more beauty, but the fashionable ladies are not out. You would 
be puzzled to discover who these lovely women are. Their toilets 
are unexceptionable, their style is a very near approach to comme 
il faut. They look perfectly satisfied with their position and with 
themselves, and they do — (what fashionable women do noi) — meet 
the eye of the promenader with a coquettish confidence he will 
misinterpret— if he be green or a puppy. Among these ladies 
are accidents of feature, form, and manner— charms of which 
the possessor is unconscious — that, if transplanted into a high- 
bred sphere of society abroad, would be bowed to as the stamp 
of lovely aristocracy. Possibly — probably, indeed — the very 
woman who is a marked instance of this, is not called pretty by 
her friends. She is only spoken to by those whose taste is com- 
monplace and unrefined. She walks Broadway, and has a vague 
suspicion that the men of fashion look at her more admiringly 
than could be accounted for by any credit she has for beauty at 
home. Yet she is not likely to be enlightened as to the secret of it. 
When tired of her promenade, she disappears by some side-street 
leading away from the great thoroughfares, and there is no clue 
to her unless by inquiries that would be properly resented as im- 
pertinence. I see at least twenty pass daily under my window, 
who would be ornaments of any society, yet who, I know, (by the 
men I see occasionally with them,) are unacknowledgable by the 
aristocrats up town. What a field for a Columbus ! How 
charming to go on a voyage of discovery and search for these 
unprized pearls among the unconscious pebbles ! How delightful 
to see these rare plants without hedges about them — exquisite 
women without fashionable affectations, fashionable hindrances, 
penalties, exactions, pretensions, and all the wearying nonsenses 



232 MUSINGS. 



that embarrass and stupefy the society of most of our female 
pretenders to exclusiveness ! 

Half -past six and after. — The flower-seller loading up his pots 
into a fragrant wagon-load. Twilight's rosy mist falUng into the 
street. Gas-lamps alight, here and there. The Museum band 
increased by two instruments, to play more noisily for the night- 
custom. The magic wheel lit up, and ground rather capriciously 
by the tired boy inside. The gaudy transparencies one by one 
illuminated. Great difference now in the paces at which people 
walk. Business-men bound home, apprentices and shop-boys 
carrying parcels, ladies belated— are among the hurrying ones. 
Gentlemen strolling for amusement take it very leisurely, and with 
a careless gait that is more graceful and becoming than their 
mien of circumspect daylight. And now thicken the flaunting 
dresses of the unfortunate outlaws of charity and pity. Some 
among them (not many) have a remainder of lady-likeness in 
their gait, as if, but for the need there is to attract attention, they 
could seem modest — but the most of them are promoted to fine 
dress from sculleries and low life, and show their shameless vul- 
garity through silk and feathers. They are not all to be pitied. 
The gentleman cit passes them by like the rails in St. Paul's 
fence — wholly unnoticed. If he is vicious, it is not those in the 
street who could attract him. The '* loafers" return their bold 
looks, and the boys pull their dresses as they go along, and now 
and then a greenish youth, well-dressed, shows signs of being 
attracted. Sailors, rowdies, country-people, and strangers who 
have dined freely, are those whose steps are arrested by them. 
It is dark now. The omnibuses, that were heavily laden through 
the twilight, now go more noisily, because lighter. Carriages 



BROADWAY. 233 



make their way toward the Park theatre. My window shows 
but the two hnes of lamps and the ghttering shops, and all else 
vaguely. 



I have repeatedly taken five minutes, at a time, to pick out 
a well-dressed man, and see if he would walk from Fulton street 
to Vesey without getting a look at his boots. You might safely 
bet against it. If he is an idle man, and out only for a walk, 
Lwo to one he would glance downward to his feet three or four 
limes in that distance. Men betray their subterfuges of toilet — 
women never. Once in the street, women are armed at all points 
against undesirable observation—men have an ostrich's obtusity, 
being wholly unconscious even of that battery of critics, a passing 
omnibus ! How many substitutes and secrets of dress a woman 
carries about her, the angels know !— but she looks defiance to 
suspicion on that subject. Sit in my window, on the contrary, 
and you can pick out every false shirt-bosom that passes, and 
every pair of false wristbands, and the dandy's economical half- 
boots, gaiter-cut trowsers notwithstanding. 

Indeed, while it is, always difficult, sometimes impossible, to 
distinguish female genuine from the imitation, nothing is easier 
than to know at sight the '* glossed {male) worsted from the 
patrician sarsnet." The " fasliion" of women, above a certain 
guide, can seldom be guessed at in the street, except by the men 
who are with them. 

You should sit in a window like mine, to know how few men 
walk with even passable grace. Nothing so corrupts the gait as 



234 MUSINGS. 



business — (a fact that would be oflfensive to mention in a purely 
business country, if it were not that the '' unmannerly haste" of 
parcel-bearing and money-seeking, may he laid aside with low- 
heeled boots and sample cards.) l.^he bent-kneed celerity, learned 
in dodging clerks and jumping over boxes on sidewalks, be- 
trays its trick in the gait, as the face shows the pucker of calcu- 
lation and the suavity of sale. I observe that the man used to 
hurry, relies principally on his heel, and keeps his foot at right 
jigles. The ornamental man drops his toe slightly downward in 
taking a step, and uses, for elasticity, the spring of his instep. 
Nature has provided muscles of grace which are only incorpora- 
ted into the gait by habitually walking with leisure. All women 
walk with comparative grace who are not cramped with tight 
shoes, but there are many degrees of gracefulness in women, and 
oh, what a charm is the highest degree of it ! How pleasurable 
even to see from my window a woman walking like a queen ! 



The February rehearsal of spring is over — the popular play of 
April having been well represented by the reigning stars and 
that pleasant company of players, the Breezes. The drop-curtain 
^"^as fallen, representing a winter-scene, principally clouds and 
snow, and the beauties of the dress-circle have retired (from 
Broadway) discontented only with the beauty of the piece. By- 
the-way, the acting was so true to Nature, that several trees in 
Broadway were affected to — budding ! 

" Ah, friends, methinks it were a pleasant sphere, 
If, like the trees, we budded every year I 



SPRING IN THE CITY. 235 



If locks grew thick again, and rosy dyes 
Returned in cheeks, a raciness in eyes, 
And all around us vital to their tips, 
The human orchard laughed with rosy lips." 

So says Leigh Hunt. 

February should be called the month of hope, for it is invariably- 
more enjoyable than the first nominal fruition — more sprincy-like 
than the first month of Spring. This is a morning that makes 
the hand open and the fingers spread — a morning that should be 
consecrated to sacred idleness. I should like to exchange work 
with any out-^f- doors man — even with a driver of an omnibus — 
specially with the farmer tinkering his fences. Cities are conve- 
nient places of refuge from winter and bad weather, but one longs 
to get out into the country, like a sheep from a shed, with the 
first warm gleam of sunshine. 



March made an expiring effort to give us a spring-day yester- 
day. The morning dawned mild and bright, and there was a 
voluptuous contralto in the cries of the milkmen and the sweeps, 
which satisfied me, before I was out of bed, that there was an 
arrival of a south wind. The Chinese proverb says, " when thou 
hast a day to be idle, be idle for a day ;" but for that very 
elusive ''time when," I irresistibly substitute the day the wind 
sweetens, after a sour northeaster. Oh, the luxury (or curse, as 
the case may be) of breakfasting leisurely with an idle day before 
one! 

I strolled up Broadway between nine and ten, and encountered 



286 MUSINGS. 



the morning tide down ; and if you never have studied the physi- 
ognomy of this great thoroughfare in its various fluxes and re- 
fluxes, the differences would amuse you. The clerks and workies 
have passed down an hour before the nine o'clock tide, and the 
sidewalk is filled at this time with bankers, brokers, and specula- 
tors, bound to Wall Street ; old merchants and junior partners, 
bound to Pearl and Water ; and lawyers, young and old, bound 
for Jfassau and Pine. Ah, the faces of care ! The day's opera- 
tions are working out in their eyes ; their hats are pitched forward 
at the angle of a stage-coach, with all the load on the driver's 
seat ; their shoulders are raised with the shrug of anxiety ; their 
steps are hurried and short, and mortal face and gait could 
scarcely express a heavier burden of solicitude than every man 
seems to bear. They nod to you without a smile, and with a 
kind of unconscious recognition ; and, if you are unaccustomed 
to walk out at that hour, you might fancy that, if there were not 
some great public calamity, your friends at least had done smiling 
on you. Walk as far as Niblo's, stop at the greenhouse there, 
and breathe an hour in the delicious atmosphere of flowering 
plants, and then return. There is no longer any particular cur- 
rent in Broadway. Foreigners coming out from the cafes, after 
their late breakfast, and idling up and down, for fresh air ; 
country-people shopping early ; ladies going to their dress-makers 
in close veils and demi-toilets ; errand-boys, news-boys, duns, 
and doctors, make up the throng. Toward twelve o'clock there 
is a sprinkling of mechanics going to dinner — a merry, short- 
jacketed, independent-looking troop, glancing gayly at the women 
as they pass, and disappearing around corners and up alleys, 
and an hour later Broadway begins to brighten. The omnibuses 



A DAY OF IDLING. 237 



go along empty, and at a slow pace, for people would rather 
walk than ride. The side-streets are tributaries of silks and 
velvets, flowers and feathers, to the great thoroughfare ; and 
ladies, vfhose proper mates (judging by the dress alone) should 
be lords and princes, and dandies, shoppers, and loungers of every 
description, take crowded possession of the pave. At nine o'clock 
you look into the troubled faces of men going to their business, 
and ask yourself '' to what end is all this burden of care ?" and, 
at two, you gaze on th<e universal prodigality of exterior, and 
wonder what fills the multitude of pockets that pay for it ! The 
faces are beautiful, the shops are thronged, the sidewalks crowded 
for an hour, and then the full tide turns and sets upward. The 
most of those who are out at three are bound to the upper part 
of the city to dine ; and the merchants and lawyers, excited by 
colHsion and contest above the depression of care, join, smiling, 
ill the throng. The physiognomy of the crowd is at its brightest. 
Dinner is the smile of the day to most people, and the hour 
approaches. Whatever has happened in stocks or politics, who- 
ever is dead, whoever ruined, since morning, Broadway is thronged 
with cheerful faces and good appetites at three ! The world 
will probably dine with pleasure up to the last day — perhaps 
breakfast with worldly care for the future on doomsday morning ! 
And here I must break off my Daguerreotype of yesterday's 
idling, for the wind came round easterly and raw at three o'clock, 
and I was driven in-doors to try industry as an opiate. 



238 MUSINGS. 



The first day of freedom from medical embargo is equivalent, 
in most men's memories, to a new first impression of existence. 
Dame Nature, like a provident housewife, seems to take the 
opportunity of a sick man's absence to whitewash and freshen the 
world he occupies. Certainly, I never saw the bay of New York 
look so beautiful as on Sunday noon ; and you may attribute as 
much as you please of this impression to the " Claude Lorraine 
spectacles" of convalescence, and as much more as pleases you to 
the fact that it was an intoxicating and dissolving day of Spring. 

The Battery on Sunday is the Champs Ely sees of foreigners. 
I heard nothing spoken around me but French and German. 
Wrapped in my cloak, and seated on a bench, I watched the 
children and the poodle-dogs at their gambols, and it seemed to 
me as if I were in some public resort over the water. They- 
bring such happiness to a day of idleness — these foreigners — 
laughing, talking nonsense, totally unconscious of observation, 
and delighted as much with the passing of a rowboat, or a 
steamer, as an American with the arrival of his own '^ argosy" 
from sea. They are not the better class of foreigners who 
frequent the Battery on Sunday. They are the newly arrived, the 
artisans, the German toymakers and the French bootmakers — 
people who still wear the spacious-hipped trowsers and scant 
coats, the gold rings in the ears, and the ruffled shirts of the 
lands of undandyfied poverty. They are there by hundreds. 
They hang over the raihng and look off upon the sea. They sit 
and smoke on the long benches. They run hither and thither 
with their children, and behave as they would in their own 
garden, using and enjoying it just as if it were their own. And 
an enviable power they have of it ! 



WHARVES ON SUNDAY. 239 



There had been a heavy fog on the water all the morning, and 
quite a fleet of the river- craft had drifted with the tide close on 
to the Battery. The soft south wind was lifting the mist in 
undulating sweeps, and covering and disclosing the spars and sails 
with a phantom effect quite melo-dramatic. By two o'clock the 
breeze was steady and the bay clear, and the horizon was com- 
pletely concealed with the spread of canvass. The grass in the 
Battery plots seemed to be growing visibly meantime, and to this 
animated sea-picture gave a foreground of tender and sparkling 
green ; the trees looked feathery with the opening buds ; the chil- 
dren rolled on the grass, and the summer seemed come. Much 
as !N[ature loves the country, she opens her green lap first in the 
cities. The valleys are asleep imder the snow, and will be, for 
weeks. 



I am inclined to think it is not peculiar to myself to have a 
Sabbath taste for the water-side. There is an affinity, felt I think 
by man and boy, between the stillness of the day and the audi- 
ble hush of boundaries to water. Premising that it was at first 
with the turned-up nose of conscious travestie, I have to confess 
the finding of a Sabbath solitude, to my mind, along the river-side 
in New- York — the first mile toward Albany on the bank of the 
Hudson. Indeed, if quiet be the object, the nearer the water 
the less jostled the walk on Sunday. You would think, to crosi* 
the city anywhere from river to river, that there was a general 
hydrophobia— -the entire population crowding to the high ridge 
of Broadway, and hardly a soul to be seen on either the East 



240 MUSINGS. 



River or the Hudson. But, with a little thoughtful frequenting, 
those deserted river-sides become contemplative and pleasant 
rambling-places ; and, if some whim of fashion do not make the 
bank of the Hudson like the Marina of Smyrna, a fashionable re- 
sort, I have my Sunday afternoons provided for, during the pig- 
ritude of city durance. 

Yesterday (Sunday) it blew one of those unfolding west winds, 
chartered expressly to pull the kmks out of the belated leaves — 
a breeze it was dehghtful to set the face to — strong, genial, and 
inspiriting, and smelling (in JSTew-Fork) of the snubbed twigs of 
Hoboken. The Battery looked very delightful, with the grass 
laying its cheek to the ground, and the trees all astir and trink- 
ling ; but on Sunday this lovely resort is full of smokers of bad 
cigars — unpleasant gentlemen to take the wind of. I turned the 
corner with a look through the fence, and was in comparative 
solitude the next moment. 

The monarch of our deep water-streams, the gigantic *^ Massa- 
chusetts," lay at her wharf, washed by the waving hands of the 
waters taking leave of the Hudson. The river ends under the 
prow — or, as we might say with a poetic license, joins on, at this 
point, to Stonington — so easy is the transit from wharf to wharf 
in that raagnificent conveyance. From this point up, extends a 
line of ships, rubbing against the pier the fearless noses that have 
nudged the poles and the tropics, and been breathed on by spice- 
islands and icebergs — an array of nobly-built merchantmen, that^ 
with the association of their triumphant and richly-freighted 
comings and goings, grows upon my eye with a certain majesty. 
It is a broad street here, of made land, and the sidewalks in front 
of the new stores are lumbered with pitch and molasses,, flour and 



SABBATH WALK. 241 



red ochre, bales, bags, and barrels, in unsightly confusion — but 
the wharf-side, with its long line of carved figure-heads, and 
bowsprits projecting over the street, is an unobstructed walk — on 
Sundays at least— and more suggestive than many a gallery of 
marble statues. The vessels that trade to the Forth Sea harbor 
here, unloading their hemp and iron ; and the superb French 
packet-ships, with their gilded prows ; and, leaning over the 
gangways and tafFrails, the Swedish and !N"orwegian sailors jab- 
ber away their Sunday's idle time ; and the negro-cooks lie and 
look into the puddles ; and, altogether, it is a strangely-mixed pic- 
ture — Power reposing, and Fret and Business gone from the six- 
days' whip and chain. I sat down on a short hawser-post, and 
conjured the spirits of ships around me. They were as commu- 
nicative as would naturally be expected in a Ute-h-tete when qviiie 
at leisure. Things they had seen and got wind of in the Indian 
seas, strange fishes that had tried the metal of their copper bot- 
toms, porpoises they had run over asleep, wrecks and skeletons 
they had thrown a shadow across when under prosperous head- 
way — these and particulars of the fortunes they had brought 
home, and the passengers coming to look through one more 
country to find happiness, and the terrors and dangers, heart- 
aches and dreams, that had come and gone with each bill of 
lading— the talkative old bowsprits told me ail. I sat and 
watched the sun setting between two outlandish-looking vessels, 
and, at twilight, turned to go home, leaving the spars and lines 
drawn in clear tracery, on a sky as rosy aud fading as a poet's 
prospects at seventeen. 

VOI^ I, 11 



242 MUSINGS. 



We know nothing of a more restless tendency than a fine, old- 
fashioned June day — one that begins with a morning damp with 
a fresh south wind, and gradually clears away in a thin white 
mist, till the sun shines through at last, genial and luxurious, but 
not sultry, and everything looks clear and bright in the transpa- 
rent atmosphere. We know nothing which so seduces the very 
eye and spirit of a man, and stirs in him that gipsy longing, 
which, spite of warning and punishment, made him a truant in hi^: 
boyhood. There is an expansive rarity in the air of such a day-— 
a something that lifts up the lungs, and plays in the nostrils with 
a delicious sensation of freshness and elasticity. The close room 
grows sadly dull under it. The half-open blind, with its tempt- 
ing glimpse of the sky, and branch of idle leaves flickering in the 
sun, has a strange witchery. The poor pursuits of this drossy 
world grow passing insignificant ; and the scrawled and blotted 
manuscripts of an editor's table— pleasant anodyne as they are 
when the wind is in the east — are, at these seasons, but the 
'* Diary of an Ennuyee"— the notched calendar of confinement 
and unrest. The commendatory sentence stands half-completed ; 
the fate of the author under review, with his two volumes, is alto- 
gether of less importance than five minutes of the life of that 
tame pigeon that sits on the eaves washing his white breast in the 
spout ; and the public good- will, and the cause of literature, and 
our own precarious livelihood, all fade into dim shadow, and 
leave us listening dreamily to the creeping of the sweet south 
upon the vine, or the far-oflf rattle of the hourly, with its freight 
of happy bowlers and gentlemen of suburbaA idienpsg. 

What is it to us when the sun is shining, and the winds bland 
and balmy, and the moist roads with their fresh smell of earth 



CONFliNED LIFE. 243 



tempting us away to the hills — what is it, then, to us, whether a 
poor-devil-author has a flaw in his style, or our own leading article 
a ^' local habitation and a name ?" Are we to thrust down our 
heart like a reptile into its cage, and close our shutter to the 
cheerful light, and our ear to all sounds of out-door happiness ? 
Are we to smother our uneasy impulses, and chain ourselves down 
to a poor, dry thought, that has neither light, nor music, nor any 
spell in it, save the poor necessity of occupation ? Shall we for- 
get the turn in the green lane where we are wont to loiter in our 
drive, and the cool claret of our friend at the Hermitage, and the 
glorious golden summer sunset in which we bowl away to the 
city — musing and refreshed ? Alas — yes ! the heart must be 
closed, and the green lane and the friend that is happier than we 
(for he is idle) must be forgotten, and the dry thought must be 
dragged up like a willful steer and yoked to its fellow, and the 
magnificent sunset, with all its glorious dreams and forgetful hap- 
piness, must be seen in the pauses of articles, and the *^ bleared 
een'' of painful attention — and all this in June — prodigal June — 
when the very worm is all day out in the sun, and the birds 
scarce stop their singing from the gray light to the dewfall ! 



What an insufi*erable state of the thermometer ! We knock 
under to Heraclitus, that fire is the first principle of all things. 
Fahrenheit at one hundred degrees in the shade ! Our curtain 
in the attic unstirred ! Our japonica drooping its great white 
flowers lower and lower. It is a fair scene, indeed ! not a ripple 
from the pier to the castle, and the surface of the wate** as Shel- 
ley says, '' like a plane of glass s| read out between two heavens ' 



244 MUSINGS. 



— and tliere is a solitary sloop, with tlie light and shade flicker- 
ing on its loose sail, positively hung in the air — and a gull, it is 
refreshing to see him, keeping down with his white wings close 
to the water, as if to meet his own snowy and perfect shadow. 
Was ever such intense, unmitigated sunshine ? There is nothing 
on the hard, opaque sky, but a mere rag of a cloud, like a hand- 
kerchief on a tablet of blue marble, and the edge of the shadow 
of that tall chimney is as definite as a hair ; and the young elm that 
leans over the fence is copied in perfect and motionless leaves, 
like a very painting on the broad sidewalk. How delightful the 
night will be after such a deluge of light ! How beautiful the 
modest rays of the starlight, and the cool dark blue of the hea- 
vens will seem after the dazzling clearness of this sultry noon ! It 
reminds one of that exquisite passage in Thalaba, where the 
spirit-bird comes, when his eyes are blinded with the intense 
brightness of the snow, and spreads her green wings before him ! 



There is no struggling against it — we have a need to pass the 
summer in some place that God made. We have argued the 
instinct down — every morning since May-day — while shaving. 
It is as cool in the city as in the country, we believe. We see as 
many trees, from our window, (living opposite St. Paul's church- 
yard,) and as much grass, as we could take in at a glance. The 
air we breathe, outside the embrasures of Castle Garden, every 
afternoon, and on board the Hoboken and Jersey boats, every 
warm evening, are entire reqompenses to the lungs for the day's 
dust and stony heat. And then God intends that somehody shall 
live in the city in summer-time, and why not we ? By the time 



WANT OF HORSES 245 



this argument is over, our chin and our rebellious spirit are both 
smoothed down. Breakfast is ready — as cool fruit, as delicious 
butter under the ice, and as beloved a vis-a-vis over the white 
cloth and coffee-tray as we should have in the country. We go 
to work after breakfast with passable content. The city cries, and 
the city wheels, the clang of the charcoal cart and the importuni- 
ties of printer's imp — all blend in the passages of our outer ear 
as unconsciously and fitly as brook-noises and breeze- doings. We 
are well enough till two. An hour to dinner — somewhat a weary 
hour, we must say, with a subdued longing for some earth to walk 
upon. Dinner — pretty well ! Discontent and sorrow dwell in a 
man's throat, and go abroad while it is watered and swept. The 
hour after dinner has its little resignation also — coffee, music, and 
the '^ angel-visit" from the nursery. Five o'clock comes round, 
and with it Nature's demand for a pair of horses. (Alas ! why are 
we not centaurs, to have a pair of horses when we marry ?) We 
get into an omnibus, and as we get toward the porcelain end of 
the city, our porcelain friends pass us in their carriages, bound out 
where the earth breathes and the grass grows. An irresistible 
discontent overwhelms us ! The paved hand of the city spreads 
out beneath us, holding down the grass and shutting off the saluta- 
ry earth-pores, and we pine for balm and moisture ! The over- 
worked mind offers no asylum of thought. It is the out-door 
time of day. Nature calls us to her bared bosom, and there is a 
floor of impenetrable stone between us and her ! At the end of 
the omnibus-hne we turn and go back, and resume our paved and 
walled-up existence ; and all the logic of philosophy, aided by 
ice-creams and bands of music, would fail to convince us, that 
night, that we are not victims and wretches For Heaven's sake, 



246 MUSINGS. 



some kind old man, give us an acre off the pavement, and money 
enough to go and lie on the outside of it, of summer afternoons ! 



We had a June May, and a May June, and the brick world of 
Manhattan has not, as yet, become too hot to hold us. This is 
to be our first experiment at passing the entire summer in the 
city, and we had laid up a few alleviations which have as yet 
kept the shelf, with our white hat, imcalled for by any great rise 
in the thermometer. There is no knowing, however, when we 
shall hear from Texas and the warm '' girdle round the earth,'* 
(the equator — no reference to English dominion,) and our advice 
to the stayers in town may be called for by a south wind before 
it is fairly printed. First — our substitute for a private yacht 
Not having twenty thousand dollars to defray our aquatic tenden- 
cies — having, on the contrary, an occasional spare shilling — we 
take our moonlight trip on the river — dividing the cool breezes, 
'twixt shore and shore — in the Jersey ferry-hoat. Smile those 
who have private yachts ! We know no pleasanter trip, after the 
dusk of the evening, than to stroll down to the ferry, haul a 
bench to the bow of the ferry-boat, and '' open up'' the evening 
breeze for two miles and back, for a shilling ! After eight o'clock, 
there are, on an average, ten people in the boat, and you have 
the cool shoulder under the railing, as nearly as possible, to your- 
self. The long line of lamps on either shore makes a gold flounce 
to the '' starry skirt of heaven" — the air is as pure as the rich 
man has it in his grounds, and all the money in the world could 
not mend the outside of your head, as far as the horizon. (And 



OMNIBUS LUXURY. 247 



the horizon, at such a place and hour, becomes a substitute for 
the small hoop you have stepped out of.) No man is richer than 
we, or could be better off— till we reach the Jersey shore — and 
we are as rich going back. Try this of a hot evening, all who 
prefer coolness and have a mind that is good company. 

Then, there is our substitute for an airing. There is a succes- 
sion of coaches, lined with red velvet, that, in the slope of the 
afternoon, ply, nearly empty, the whole length of Broadway — 
two or three miles, at an easy pace, for sixpence. We have had 
vohicles, or friends who had vehicles, in most times and places 
that we remember, and we crave our ride after dinner. We need 
to gei away from walls and ceiKng stuck over with cares and 
brain- work, and to be amused v/ithout effort— particularly with- 
out the effort of walking or talking. So — - 

" Taking our hat in our hand, that remarkably requisite practice"— 

we step out from our side -street to the brink of Broadway, and 
presto, like magic, up drives an empty coach with two horses, red 
velvet hning, and windows open ; and, by an adroit slackening of 
the tendons of his left leg, the driver opens the door to us. With 
the leisurely pace suited to the hour and its hesoin, our carriage 
rolls up Broadway, giving us a sliding panorama of such charms 
as are peculiar to the afternoon of the great thoroughfare, (quite 
the best part of the day, for a spectator merely.) Every bonnet 
we see wipes off a care from our mental slate, and every nudge to 
our curiosity shoves up our spirits a peg. Easily and uncrowded, " 
we are set down for our sixpence at " Fourteenth street," and 
turning our face once more toward Texas, we take the next vel- 
vet-lined vehicle bound down. The main difference betwixt us 



248 MUSINGS. 



and the rich man, for that hour, is, that he rides in a green lane, 
and we in Broadway — he sees green leaves, and we pretty wo- 
men — he pays much and we pay little. The question of envy^ 
therefore, depends upon which of these categories you honestly 
prefer. While Providence furnishes the spare shilling, we, at any 
rate, will not complain. Such of our friends as are prepared to 
condole with us for our summer among the bricks, will please 
credit us with the two foregoing alleviations. 



There is nothing for which the simiHtudes of poetry seem to 
us so false and poor, as for affliction by the death of those we 
love. The news of such a calamity is not '' a blow." It is not 
like "a thunderbolt,'' or *' a piercing arrow ;" it does not "crush 
and overwhelm'' us. We hear it, at first, with a kind of mourn- 
ful incredulity, and the second feeling is, perhaps, a wonder at 
ourselves — that we are so little moved. The pulse beats on as 
tranquilly — the momentary tear dries from the eye. We go on, 
about the errand in which we were interrupted. We eat, sleep, at 
our usual time, and are nourished and refreshed ; and if a friend 
meet us and provoke a smile, we easily and forgetfully smile. 
Nature does not seem to be conscious of the event, or she does 
not recognize it as a calamity. 

But little of what is taken away by death is taken from the 
happiness of one hour, or one day. We live, absent from be- 
loved relatives, without pain. Days pass without our seeing 
them — months — years. They would be no more absent in body 



DEFERRINGS OF SORROW. 249 



if they were dead. But suddenly, in the midst of our common 
occupations, we hear that they are one remove farther from us — in 
the grave. The mind acknowledges it true. The imagination makes 
a brief and painful visit to the scene of the last agony, the death- 
chamber, the burial — and returns, weary and dispirited, to repose. 
For that hour, perhaps, we should not have thought of the depart- 
ed if they were living — nor for the next. The routine we had relied 
upon to fill up those hours comes round. We give it our cheer- 
ful attention. The beloved dead are displaced from our memory, 
and perhaps we start suddenly, with a kind of reproachful sur- 
prise, that we can have been so forgetful — that the world, with 
its wheels of minutes and trifles, can thus untroubled go round, 
and that dear friend gone from it. 

But the day glides on, and night comes. We lie down, and 
unconsciously, as we turn upon our pillow, commence a recapit- 
ulation that was once a habit of prayer — silently naming over the 
friends whom we should commend to God — did we pray — as 
those most dear to us. Suddenly the heart stops — the breath 
hushes — the tears spring hot to the eyelids. We miss the dead ! 
From that chain of sweet thoughts a link is broken ; and, for the 
first time, we feel that we are bereaved. It was in the casket of 
that last hour before sleeping — embalmed in the tranquillity of 
that hour's unnamed and unreckoned happiness — that the mem- 
ory of the dead lay hid. For that friend, now, we can no longer 
pray ! Among the living — among our blessings — among our 
hopes— that sweet friend is nameable no more ! We realize it 
now. The list of those who love us — whom we love^ — is made 
briefer. With face turned upon our pillow— with anguish and 
11* 



250 MUSINGS. 



fears — we blot out the beloved name, and begin the slow and 
nightly task of unlearning the oft-told syllables from our lips. 

And this is the slow-opening gate by which sorrow enters in ! 
We wake on the morrow, and remember our tears of the past 
night ; and, as the cheerful sunshine streams in at our window, 
we think of the kind face and embracing arms, the soft eyes and 
beloved lips, lying dark and cold, in a place — oh, how pitiless in 
its coldness and darkness ! We choke with a suffused sob, we 
heave the heavy thought from our bosom with a painful sigh, 
and hasten abroad — for relief in forgetfulness ! 

But we had not anticipated that this dear friend would die, 
and we have marked out years to come with hopes in which the 
dead was to have been a sharer. Thoughts, and promises, and 
meetings, and gifts, and pleasures, of which hers was the brighter 
half, are wound like a wreath of flowers around the chain of the 
future, and, as we come to them — to the places where these look- 
ed-for flowers lie in ashes upon the inevitable link — oh, God ! 
with what agonizing vividness they suddenly return ! — with what 
grief, made intenser by realizing, made more aching by prolonged 
absence, we call up those features beloved, and remember where 
they lie, uncaressed and unvisited ! Years must pass — and 
other aff"ections must *' sweep, and garnish, and enter in" to the 
void chambers of the heart — and consolation and natural forget- 
fulness must do their slow work of erasure — and, meantime, grief 
visits us, in unexpected times and places, its paroxysms imper- 
ceptibly lessening in poignancy and tenacity, but life, in its main 
current, flowing, from the death to the forgetting of it, un- 
changed on ! 



GRIEFS RECURRENCES 251 



And now, wtat is like to this, in Nature, (for even the slighl 
sympathy in dumb similitudes is sweet ?) It is not like the 
rose's perishing — for that robs only the hour in which it dies. 
It were more like the removal from earth of that whole race of 
flowers, for we should not miss the first day's roses, hardly the first, 
season's, and should mourn most when the impoverished Spring- 
came once more round without them. It were like stilling the 
music of a brook forever, or making all singing-birds dumb, or 
hushing the wind-murmur in the trees, or drawing out from 
Nature any one of her threads of priceless repetition. We should 
not mourn for the first day's silence in the brook, or in the trees— 
nor for the first morning's hush after the birds were made voice- 
less. The recurrent dawns, or twilights, or summer noons, rob- 
bed of their accustomed music, would bring the sense of its loss 
— the value of what was taken away increasing with its recurrent 
Season. But these are weak similitudes— as they must needs be, 
drawn from a world in which death — the lot alike of all living 
creatures that inhabit it— is only a calamity to man ! 



EVANESCENT IMPRESSIONS. 

I have very often, in the fine passages of society — such as 
occur sometimes in the end of an evening, or when a dinner-party 
has dwindled to an unbroken circle of choice and congenial spirits, 
or at any of those times when conversation, stripped of all reserve 
or check, is poured out in the glowing and unfettered enthusiasm 
to which convivial excitement alone gives the confidence necessary 
to its flow— I have often wished, at such times, that the voice 



252 MUSINGS. 



and manner of the chance and fleeting eloquence about us could 
be arrested and written down for others besides ourselves to 
see and admire. In a chance conversation at a party, in the 
bagatelle rattle of a dance, in a gay hour over coffee and sand- 
wiches en famille, wherever you meet those whom you love or 
value, there will occur pieces of dialogue, jeux d^esprit, passages 
of feeling or fun — trifles, it is true, but still such trifles as make 
eras in the calendar of happiness— which you would give the 
world to rescue from their ephemeral destiny. They are, per- 
haps, the soundings of a spirit too deep for ordinary life to fathom, 
or the gracefulness of a fancy linked with too feminine a nature 
to bear the eye of the world, or the melting of a frost of reserve 
from the diffident genius — they are traces of that which is fleeting, 
or struck out like phosphorus from the sea by irregular chance—- 
and you want something quicker and rarer than formal descrip- 
tion to arrest it warm and natural, and detain it in its x)Iace till 
h can be looked upon. 



INVALID RAMBLES 



IN GERMANY, 



IN THE SUMMER OF 1845. 



INVALID RAMBLES. 



WiTF my brother, who has been some years resident in Germany, 
I started one beautiful autumnal afternoon, on a visit to the L^ipsic 
Cemetery. On our way we met a mourning- carriage, with an ar- 
rangement that was new to me, and I was at a loss whether to 
think it touching or droll. The'hearse, and the carriage for the 
principal mourners, were combined in one vehicle — the head of the 
corpse, that is to say, lying in the carriage on the fore-seat and 
its feet extending out under the driver. It was like a coach with 
a long black box projecting lengthwise under the driver's feet. 
In the novelty, probably, lay all that produced an irreverent feel- 
ing ; as nearness to the dead, up to the last moment, must be 
desirable to the mourner accompanying the body to the grave. 

The German funeral customs are, in many respects, different 
from those of other countries. As we walked through the ceme- 
tery, I saw various things which struck me as curious, some of 
them agreeable to the mind and some revolting. I was pleased. 
among other things, with a pretty substitute for the '' born" and 
"died" of common inscriptions upon tombstones- — an upright 
torch over the date of the birth, and an inverted torch over the 



256 INVALID RAMBLES. 



date of the death. The new-made graves were singularly orna- 
mented. In addition to bouquets of flowers, which, by them- 
selves, seem a very natural tribute, muslin scarfs, with gold and 
silver fringes, were laced across the sod, and sliced lemons laid 
in among the flowers. The tops of most of the new-made graves 
resembled the ornaments for a diner sur Vherhe ; and as these tri- 
butes apparently are not removed for months, the decayed fruit 
and flowers, and the soiled lace, upon the less recent mounds, 
seemed to me rather to express neglect than attention. Most of 
the graves in the open church-yard, (the " God's acre,^^ as the 
Germans strongly call it,) have palings around them, and an in- 
variable wooden seat and gravel-walk within. These arrange- 
ments for walking around, and sitting with, the dead, are so in- 
conveniently small that I presumed they were figurative, and might 
as well have been carved upon the tombstone ; but they are kept 
in order, the year round, for fees paid to the sexton ; and, once a 
year, (on St. John's day, ) it is the custom at Leipsic for relatives 
to meet and pass the day with their dead, covering the graves with 
fresh flowers, and eating, drinking, and smoking there together. 
With the lower classes, this day of revisiting and recalling the 
memory of the dead, is turned into a picknick frohc. 

The upper classes bury their dead in a kind of open cottage, 
each family having a separate one, and these small buildings 
standing in regular rows around squares, Hke a rural village. 
They resemble neat suburban residences, only that the door is of 
wire-work, and the centre of the floor is never closed over the 
vault. As you look in, you see a pretty room hung with ever- 
green wreaths and decorated with the names of the dead, written 
and framed, and hanging, like pictures, on the walls. The en- 



GERMAN FRIENDSHIP. 257 



deavor seems to have been to remove the look of repulsive 
imprisonment of the dead. 

In the newer part of the cemetery, I observed that handsome 
enclosures were the prevailing taste, with a wall at the back, in 
which was set a marble tablet for the inscriptions. One of these 
was an indication of a plant much more carefully cultivated in 
Germany .y^an with us — [friendship) — and ran thus : ''Resting- 
place of the family Plato and their friend BolzT In the centre 
of another tablet, inscribed '' Family Schmidt,'' was a sculptured 
Death's head with a lizard and snake creeping from the holes of the 
skull — a sort of horrible defiance of the general spirit of this poetical 
cemetery which must have come from an obstinate bad man. Two 
inscriptions which I saw here delighted me. One was, ''Rest 
lightly, good daughter .^"— an epitaph of beautiful simplicity. The 
other is the perfection of poetical brevity and elegance, and was 
engraved on a small and humble stone : " Tin ange deplus an ciel^ 

The church of St. John stands at the entrance of this cemetery, 
and the many streets and squares, extending far off in the rear, 
offer a cheerful rather than a gloomy promenade to the public. 
There is another cemetery, I was told, in the neighborhood of 
Leipsic, in a secluded place called St. John's Valley, to which 
great numbers of the lower classes resort for the frolicksome 
keeping of the sepulchral anniversary. 

I observed that the German grave-digger has an expressive 
addition to his tools — a ladder — to insure his return. On inquir- 
ing as to the meaning of the sliced lemons upon the graves, I was 
told that, as anti-corruptive, the fruit was symbolical ; and that 
the poor commonly bury the dead with the chin propped with a 
lemon, as there is an opinion very common, that, at a certain 



258 INVALID RAMBLES. 



stage of corruption, the body trembles, and the jaw wags, if un* 
supported. 



11. 



Teaching the deaf and dumb to hear with the eye, and teaching 
them to know how to speak by seeing and feeling words when 
spoken, are triumphs of inventive benevolence, of which the pa- 
tient and good Germans should have as enthusiastic credit, as 
rV^as given to Howe for the lighting of the windowless cell in 
which was locked up the mind of Laura Bridgman. Under the 
guidance of a friend of Horace Mann's, (Dr. Vogel,) my brother 
and I joined Dr. Bartlett, of Philadelphia, in a visit to the school 
where this difficult tuition is practiced. We were shown at once 
into one of the school -rooms, where, while waiting for the princi- 
pal, we saw a teacher employed in the initiatory lesson. Ten or 
fifteen deaf and dumb boys sat at a long table, with slates and 
pencils ; and the master, seated at the upper end, had one pupil 
standing at his knee, whom he was instructing, while the others 
looked on. As he pronounced the letters of the alphabet, the 
boy imitated the motion of his lips, and thereby made the same 
sound — aiding his imitation of it by placing his hand on the mas- 
ter's breast and feeling the vibration, and then trying the vibration 
Z his own. The other boys, meantim.e, wrote on their slates the 
letters they saw spoken — waiting their turn for experiment with 
the master. 

It is curious, to one who has never before thought of it, what a 
different gate the mouth is, to the different comers-out — how dif- 
ferently it lets out A from B, C from D. These teachers of the 
deaf and dumb find no difficulty in making the exit of every let- 



HEARING WITH THE EYE. 259 



ter of the alphabet distincftly recognizable by the eye only. The 
boys at this table were beginners, but they already knew their 
letters thus hy sight, when spoken. The little fellow who was up 
for his lesson was a complete personification of Shakspeare'^ 
Puck — a rosy, laughing, untroubled urchin, whom it was almost a 
pity to help out of his locked-up self into a less happy world — dig- 
ging into a pure spring to let in upon it a muddy river — and his 
imitation-utterances of the letters were very discordant and un- 
natural, as would be expected from a deaf and dumb beginner. 
The entrance of the principal of the school interrupted our ac- 
quaintance with him, and we followed into another apartment, to 
see the upper class, not without a pressure of my hand on the 
head of my little favorite, and a smile of intelhgence magnetically 
quick in return. At a table in this same room, by the way, 
the son of an Austrian nobleman was pointed out to us among 
the new scholars — a straight, well-limbed lad of fourteen, who, 
by his melancholy countenance, seemed to have been made more 
fully aware than the other boys of the extent of their common 
calamity. 

The upper class numbered some eight or ten lads, who were 
being taught to hear and speak hy a deaf and dumb tutor. (By 
hear, I mean, of course, understand what is said.) This tutor 
was a perfected pupil of the Institution, and a sufficient proof of 
the practicability of the system. He was born deaf and dumb, 
but he conversed freely ! He was a young man of twenty-five, 
very intelligent-looking, and differed from other people only in\ 
the intense expression of searchingness in his countenance — a gaze 
as if he was trying to look through you into another man — natu- 
ral enough when you reflect that he converses habitually with* 



260 INVALID RAMBLES. 



people by only seeing them talk. No^ understanding the lan- 
guage, I could not, of course, judge of the correctness of his ac- 
centuation, but he answered the questions put to him with great 
readiness, only with a little more guttural effort and more twist- 
ing of the lips than other people. He found no difficulty in un- 
derstanding what my brother said to him — though Americans, 
even in speaking German, move their mouths much less than 
Germans. In this national immobihty of the external organs of 
speech, indeed, lies a formidable obstacle to the success of this 
system, either in England or America. We do our talking inside 
the mouth, slighting all the angular sounds to which the honest 
German lips do such visible justice. It was odd, by the way, to 
see my brother endeavoring to make the tutor hear a question 
when his back was turned — the latter perfectly unaware that he 
was spoken to, though he had heard all that was said to him be- 
fore. 

The experiments with the class were exceedingly interesting. 
To see a once deaf and dumb man talking to deaf and dumb boys, 
who afterwards wrote with chalk upon the wall what we had 
heard and they had seen him say, was a scene that had in it ele- 
ments for the sublime. It seemed to me, indeed, somewhat as 
clairvoyance does — ^like venturously forcing a door that God has 
pointedly shut. I speak only of my impression at the time. I 
looked along the bench, however, to see if I could detect, among 
the youthful heads, an embryal Moloch, rehgious, political, or 
moral, whose senses it had been thus necessary to lock from ac- 
tion on the world. JSTone, there, looked to me as if he had in 
him the stuff for dangerous greatness. 
• I regret exceedingly that the name of the benevolent inventor 



GERMAN INATTENTION TO HEALTH. 261 

of this system has slipped from my memory. His physiognomy 
is marked for a philanthropist, and he looks at home in the school, 
to which he has devoted his hfe. I think he said it had been in 
operation fifteen years, but mention is made of it in one of the 
well-known Reports of Horace Mann, to which I refer those who 
wish for more particular information. One shade I must put in, 
with the light of the picture, and I do it solely in the hope of 
calling the attention of the worthy principal to the subject, since 
I could not name it without apparent intrusion through an inter- 
preter, and — '' scripta verba manent.'" I refer to the tmnt of per- 
sonal cleanliness in the pupils, and a closeness of air in the school- 
rooms that was really offensive. The majority of the boys, and 
all the masters, were evidently suffering for fresh air — pale and 
unhealthy, as well as neglectful of their persons. This (as every 
one knows who has travelled here) is a Germanism, and the 
country needs, as an avatar to the progress of education, a mis- 
sionary to preach ventilation. To destroy a boy's health while 
supplying him with intelligence to enjoy life, is like the Indian's 
lengthening his blanket — adding to the bottom a piece cut from 
the top. 

The system of hearing with the eye gives a valuable hint to 
those who are merely deaf, but, as an unsuspected accomphsh- 
ment, it would make dangerous havoc among secrets. Fancy a 
man in the pit of a theatre who could overhear with an opera- 
glass every body whom he could see talking. How many inter- 
views between Napoleon and the statesmen of Europe are de- 
scribed in memoirs, where the writer speaks of seeing the coun- 
tenances and gesticulations of the talkers, yet only guesses at the 
drift of the conversation ! How judges, conferring in whispers 



262 INVALID RAMBLES. 



on the bench, diplomatists at court, speculators on 'change, set- 
ters at play, lovers out of ear-shot, might insensibly reveal secrets 
to one of those eye-hsteners ! Metternich would find employ for 
a man with such an accomplishment. 



III. 

We went, on Sunday morning, to hear the motett — a kind of 
chaunt performed by the choir of boys who are educating in 
music at the Leipsic Conservatory. This performance opens the 
morning service of the Lutheran Church, at eight o'clock, and, 
even at that early hour, it draws a fashionable amateur audience 
of University students, strangers, and citizens. They are some- 
times accompanied by a full orchestra, and, to this assimilation 
with theatricals, even the most " evangelical," in this music-loving 
nation, do not object. The motett would not be called music, 
however, by uneducated ears. It opened with what sounded 
like a general scream of forty or fifty boys at the tops of their 
voices. They went on with what seemed a musical scramble, or 
race, moderating a little towards the close, where a most thrilling 
effect was produced by a sudden pause, and an echo sent back 
from the other end of the church, by voices hidden behind the 
altar. In this class of compositions, each part overlaps the other, 
like scale-armor, and it takes very industrious listening not to 
have one's comprehension of the harmony outran. The hoy- 
. soprano is considered a great musical luxury. As in the miserere 
at Rome, it is very much run after, in the motett, by the epicures 
in harmony. Its intense purity has certainly an effect leaning 
towards the supernatural, though Nature, by giving a quality of 



MUSICAL COMPOSITION. 263 



voice that departs with the innocence of youth, seems to have 
dedicated boys to church worship — the voice itself, while it lasts, 
expressing the purity proper to the choristers of the temple. 

Germany is the inner tabernacle of harmony, and the science 
of music is studied here with a philosophic depth that makes of 
it an intellectual profession. In America, the public at large 
makes little distinction between great composers and great players 
— all who are devoted to music, being, in common parlance, 
"musicians.'' But there is almost as much difference between 
composing harmony and playing it, as between making a horse 
and driving it. Lizst, Yieuxtemps, De Meyer, and other great 
players, it need hardly be said, are men of very different pro- 
fession from Beethoven, Mozart, and Meyerbeer. Eminence in 
both composing and playing is sometimes united in one man- 
as in Wallace, who is a successful author of operas and waltzes, 
and, at the same time, a great pianist and violinist. So, in the 
drama, Sheridan Knowles is both dramatist and actor. But, 
simple difference as this appears, it is a fact that, even in England, 
the two are superficially confused ; and it is in Germany alone 
that the musical composer is of a recognized intellectual profes- 
sion. The process of musical composition, indeed, is a matter of 
very difficult study, and it requires years of application to acquire 
that familiarity with the laws of harmony which is necessary to 
compose understandingly. There is no profession, perhaps, which 
requires so complete abstraction of mind ; and a composer of 
acknowledged genius holds, in Germany, the mingled estimation 
of scholar and poet. He is very certain to be^an enthusiast in 
his art, for even poets and scholars are better paid for their toils. 
It is probably part of the reason why Germany has become the 



264 INTALID RAMBLEh. 



fountain of music, that, in addition to the proper estimation in 
which its gifted followers are held, there are benefices, of some 
emolument and more honor, conferred on the most distinguished 
by the continental sovereigns, and there are situations of some 
profit connected with church music, with operas, and musical 
instruction in most of the capitals. Mendelssohn, for example, 
is the '' chapel-master" to the King of Saxony— a very desirable 
salaried appointment. 

In our comparatively new country, we are too busy, as yet, 
with the expressible^ to appreciate the higher meanings of music, 
which Beethoven called ''the language of the inexpressible." 
But, as a refiner and chastener to the public taste, as an innocent 
absorbent of popular leisure, and as an easy current of enthusi- 
asm, on which may be embarked a great deal of instruction, pa- 
triotism, and religious feeling, a general taste for the simpler 
forms of music is a national object, worthy of present and thought- 
ful attention. The wealthy and refined in our country, as in all 
others, will command operas, and the best players and singers 
from abroad ; but, like the exotics in green-houses, these expen- 
sive importations bring but little of the soil in which they sprung, 
and produce nothing for ''the many." We want American mu- 
sic to give natural fragrance to American feeling, enthusiasm and 
religion. As a momentum to patriotism, and a ch»in to link to- 
gether the feeling of an army, there is nothing like a national air, 
as is abundantly shown in the history of Swiss and German en- 
thusiasm ; but, war aside, national music is the true nurse for love 
of home and love of country, and in a general taste for music hes 
one of the greatest levers which can be brought to bear on reli- 
gion and devotional feeling. The hymns and chorals of Luther 



MUSIC, IN EDUCATION. 265 

are recorded by church historians as all-powerful in advancing 
the cause of the Reformation, and a saying is recorded of one of 
the cardinals— '^ By his songs he has conquered us." A striking 
instance is given of the effect of one of these compositions. Dur- 
ing the struggle between Popery and Protestantism, whilst mass 
was celebrating at the Cathedral at Lubec, and the people were 
preparing to leave the church, two boys began to sing a choral 
of Luther's which had just become generally known, entitled, 
'' God of heaven, look to it !" The congregation remained and 
joined in the singing of it, as though it had been given out from 
the pulpit, and the next day the Roman Catholic clergy left the 
city, and Protestantism was established. 

The '' conservatory " that I have mentioned above, is a school, 
connected with the Church of St. Thomas, at Leipsic, where boys 
are sent who show a decided natural talent for music. This 
branch of education has long been considered, in Germany, very 
important, and it has lately been taken up in England by the 
Committee of the Privy Council for Education. A singing- school 
for schoolmasters was estabhshed in Exeter Hall, a year or two 
ago, under the direction of this committee. The object was pro- 
fessedly '' to make congregational singing a part of popular educa- 
tion,'' so that every one could join harmoniously in this effective 
portion of divine service. Not long since, the importance of this 
powerful element of education was agitated among the professors 
of I'ale College, and (I may, perhaps, mention here, without in- 
delicacy) it was the impulse of this movement which determined 
ray brother, just then graduating at Yale, to follow his strong 
natural bent, and substitute the cultivation of music for a learned 

VOL. I. 12 



266 INVALID RAMBLES. 



profession. He is now at Leipsic, completing his fourth year of 
study of musical composition. 

Among the statues most honored at Leipsic — standing in the 
public promenade — is that of Sebastian Bach, who, in his time, 
was one of the boys in the choir of the Church of St. Thomas. 
He was afterwards director of the choir. His name as a mu- 
sical composer stands high in Germany— his oratorios and 
chorals being considered models of grandeur and magnificence. 
He was a first-rate performer on the organ, as well as a com- 
poser. 

I may add, to the foregoing mention of the importance attached 
to musical education, that the church music of Russia, which has 
always been celebrated, is owing to the care bestowed on it by 
the government. A vocal academy has existed there for several 
centuries — established in the reign of Wladimir the Great. It is 
maintained by the State, and means are liberally provided for the 
improvement of the students in every branch of musical science. 
Madame Catalini was once present at a chorus sung by the pupils 
of this school, and is said to have exclaimed in tears—'' My songs 
are but of this world, but that which I have just heard is a chorus 
of angels." 

We heard a motett, on another Sunday, in the Church of St. 
Nicholas, considered the handsomest Lutheran church in Ger- 
many. It is thought, by architectural critics, to be overloaded 
with ornament, but it is certainly a magnificent structure. It was 
here, by the way, that I first became aware of a very sensible 
German custom — that of concentrating the coughing and nose- 
dowing during service-time. The clergyman stops at different 



GCE THE S DRINKING-CELLAR. 267 



periods of his discourse, steps back from his pulpit-stand, and 
hloivs Ms nose — the entire congregation imitating his example, and 
disturbing the service with the operation at no other time. This 
Church of St. Nicholas is famous for another arrangement pecu- 
liar to itself. The wealthy citizens of the town have private boxes, 
with private entrances from the street, so that their coming and 
going, and their stay in the church, are free from all observation. 
The motett which we heard at this church, even to my own un- 
educated ear, was thrillingly beautiful, and I thought, then, that 
no preparative of the proper mood for divine service could be 
more effective. Such music must stir the tears of the listener, 
and the door for devotional utterance is then open, if ever. 



In the very centre of Leipsic stands the old building, under 
which is the famous Auerbach's Cellar, celebrated by Goethe's 
having laid a scene of his Faust there, and by the more tangible 
association that it was a frequent place of carousal for Goethe 
himself — (educated, you remember, at the University of Leipsic.) 
Knowing the fact that an immortal poet had been seen there 
as a boy, and had drunk beer there without passing for more 
than any other customer, we went in — prepared, of course, to be 
sharper-eyed than his contemporaries, and, while we were there, 
at least, to let no immortal sit unrecognized at the beer-tables. 
Auerbach's is a two-story celk r, the counting-house on the left 
hand of the floor nearest above ground, and the vaulted drinking 
room on the right. On a table at the foot of the entrance- stairs, 
stood sealed bottles of different wines and liquors, (making rather 



268 INVALID RAMBLES. 



the show of a Bininger's than a Windust's,) but, dropping our 
heads to go under the arch of the heavy pillars which sustain the 
old building, we stood in a low vault, with very dim daylight 
around us. The walls were well rubbed, shoulder-blade high, 
and the yellow wash of the arched ceiling was dull with smoke. 
The tables had the much-wiped complexion common to cellars, 
but we looked in vain for the gimlet-holes out of which Mephis- 
tophiles supplied the drunken students with wine, and the per- 
son who came forward to know our wants, though '' his coat it 
was black," (and, to our surprise, he seemed rather a gentleman 
" in his Sunday's best" than a waiter,) answered in no other par- 
ticular to the portrait of the fiend of Dr. Faustus. On the con- 
trary, he could offer to conjure us up nothing better to eat than 
a herring — for we were hungry with strolling through the Fair, 
and wanted something with our beer. 

We sat down with our mugs before us, and loosed our imagi- 
nations. The furniture of the cellar was evidently unchanged, 
and I doubt if the ceiling had been more than cobweb'd, except 
with the head of an occasional tall man, since Goethe's time. 
Two persons only were present, besides ourselves ; but, prepared 
as we were to recognize a poet in either of them, we were com- 
pelled to admit that they ate their herrings and drank their beer 
without any symptom of an unshed chrysalis. Having stu- 
diously avoided learning any German since I have been in the 
country, (thinking that a language, like a razor, is worse than 
none, unless you can use it with a very fine edge,) I went on for 
a little while, fancying that the gutturals I overheard might pos- 
sibly have a smack of inspiration ; but my brother, to whom the 
language now is rather more familiar ^.han English, dissolved even 



NAPOLEON S TENT 269 



that illusion by a translation of his overhearings. They were 
traders, talking of goods — topics infra dig, for Mephistophiles or 
his poets. With a look at all the stools, to make sure that we 
had seen one that had been honored with the avoirdupois of the 
poet, we paid for our drink and its salt provocative, and '' left the 
presence.'* 

Just around the corner from Auerbach's, is the square in which 
the Allied Sovereigns and their Generals met, on the day after 
Napoleon's first certain toppling to his downfall — the day after 
the crisis-battle of Leipsic. One of the buildings in this square, 
the Konigshaus, was the Emperor's head-quarters before the bat- 
tle, and it was in this house that Schwartzenburg, the General 
who commanded against him in this eventful conflict, died — seven 
years after. Overwhelming as is the interest of such a spot, with 
all the mighty shadows which haunt the historic memory of the 
visitor, it would have been more interesting, far, to me, to have 
seen the tent in which Napoleon fell asleep on the battle-field, 
without the walls, with his Marshals around him — in the hour, 
beyond doubt, when Hope finally left him— a scene which is, to 
me, one of the most affecting in all history, and one of the grand- 
est subjects for painting or poetry. It will perhaps give value to 
the little I can say of my walk over the battle-field of Leipsic, to 
refer to a passage or two from the history of this memorable strug- 
gle — passages descriptive of a most thrilling crisis in the fate of 
Europe, and the picture of which will bear recalling, even by 
those most familiar with the remembrance. As the reader will 
recollect, the Powers in the North had combined in a desperate 
and unanimous uprising to throw off the oppression of French 
conquest, and, by a succession of reverses, the hitherto indomita- 



210 INVALID RAMBLES. 



ble eagles cf Napoleon had been driven from the Elbe to the El- 
ster. The English had sent gold, the Prussian women had 
given their jewels and ornaments, the Emperor Alexander was 
present with his army, the King of Prussia with his, Berna- 
dotte with his Swedes, and the Saxons deserting by thousands 
from Napoleon, though their King remained true to him. Aus- 
tria, too, had just broken her alhance with him, and Bavaria was 
ready to cut off his retreat to France, should he be defeated. The 
French army was worn out and dispirited by unceasing and losing 
conflicts, and though, wherever the Emperor appeared in person, 
victory was sure, his Marshals had been defeated so repeatedly, 
that the army was discouraged. At Leipsic the grand rally was 
made for a decided struggle, however, and the AlUes came up 
for the " Volkerschlact,'' or Battle of the Nations, as the Ger- 
mans now call it, with the tremendous force of 230,000 soldiers ! 
Bonaparte's army numbered 136,000. It was the longest, stern- 
est and bloodiest of the battles of Europe, and one of the largest 
in the history of the world. 

A merry company of German peasants, returning from the 
Fair, and going out towards their homes by the bridge over the 
Elster, walked just before us on the way to the battle-field, and 
their laugh was in our ears when we stopped, over the stream, to 
look into its quiet waters and know it for the scene of this event- 
ful history. The Elster here is deep, but narrow — perhaps 
twenty feet across — and, with its smooth current and grassy 
banks, looked like anything but the centre of one of the bloodi- 
est spots on earth. A pretty cottage, trelHsed and surrounded 
by a neat garden, stands just on the outer side of the bridge, 
and several cannon-balls, which struck it during the battle, are 



PONIATOWSKI. 271 



now sticking in its walls, painted over with the bricks in whici: 
they are half imbedded. The battle-field extends from the bridge 
in an open and level plain, carefully cultivated but unfenced, and 
the sole occupants of the ground on which was fought the Bat 
tie of Nations— the field on which lay at one time over a hun 
dred thousand dead and dying — was a single laborer, ploughing, 
with a horse and cow harnessed together ! I should mention 
perhaps, a fiock of crows who followed in the newly turned 
furrow, picking up worms that had in them, no doubt, the blood 
of heroes. 

Just on the left of the bridge, on the inner side of the Elster, 
toward the town, is a beautiful garden in which is cultivated (for 
sale) the memory of Poniatowski. Six silver groschen are charg- 
ed for entrance. Opposite the spot where the brave Pole waj^ 
drowned, is a small temple in which is shown his saddle and 
pistols, his autograph, a bust of him, several engraved likenesses « 
and the bones of the horse drowned under him. In another part 
of the garden is a small monument erected by his comrades on 
the spot where his body was found, four days after the bat- 
tle. He had been thrice wounded during the day, and was prob- 
ably exhausted when he reached the river, or his failure in an 
attempt to cross so narrow a stream would scarce seem credible. 
He was mounted upon a chance horse, howef er, his own having 
been killed under him, and the channel was choked up with the 
struggling multitude driven into it after the destruction of the 
bridge. The little memoir, hung on the wall near his relics, 
states that he was» entreated to give up his command after he was 
wounded, and retire from the field, and his reply is the last word 
recorded of Poniatowski : — '' The honor of the Poles has been 



2*72 INVALID RAMBLES. 



entrusted to me, and I will give it up only to my God !" How 
strangely irresistible - and thrilling is tlie admiration we bestow 
upon tliis kind of heroism ? Yet it is easier than a great many 
other things men do, who are not thought much of. 

My pen leaves the battle-ground of Leipsic with great reluct- 
ance ; and, on re-reading, I have destroyed a couple of pages into 
which the interest of the spot inveigled me — for, though a visit 
to the scenes of great events stirs enthusiasm that is fresh in 
itself, the record of the enthusiasm must be but a repetition of what 
has been often said and thought before. It is easier to write 
about a pyramid than a pebble, (as the author of Proverbial 
Philosophy would say,) and, in travelling over a country so 
thickly sown with exciting history and localities, it requires some 
forbearance to leave untouched the prominent, because hacknied, 
topics, and confine one's self to trifles that have been overlooked. 



The Fair (of Leipsic) has its suburbs, and our daily stroll com- 
menced with the fruit market, open at this particular season for 
the winter supplies. We lodged immediately in the rear of this 
acre of apple women, and the fragrance we met on coming out 
of doors, was like the smell of the forbidden tree, so cleverly 
described by Satan to Eve — 

" A savory odor blown, 
Grateful to appetite, more pleased my s^nse 
Than smell of sweetest fennel, or the teats 
Of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even." 



LEIPSIC APPLE-MARKET 2*73 



The fruit, of many very fine varieties, was heaped up in bins, 
boarded in, by each owner, between four poles, and on the 
tops of the poles stood gayly-colored baskets of fruit and 
flowers, the sales-woman sitting below on a low stool, up to her 
knees in pears and apples. As you walk through the fragrant 
apple lane, you are assailed w^ith the most complimentary invita- 
tions to stop and spend a groschen, and (like Satan) we generally 
yielded- — Germany being a country of charming independence as 
to the where and how of eating. At night a large cloth is 
thrown over the fruit on the ground, and, as the market is on the 
open suburb, with not even a covered booth to protect it, I won- 
dered, passing it late and seeing no one on the watch, at the con- 
fidence it implied in the popular honesty. A moonlight night, 
however, chanced to reveal the secret. It will not be in this gen- 
eration that a Yankee farmer and his vfife will be content to take 
apples to town and sleep three weelcs in the barrels— hut so do the 
Germans at Leipsic ! I vv^as standing, in a clear, cool autumn 
twilight, after a walk, watching the full moon and setting sun on 
the opposite edges of the horizon, when, happening to look 
around, I observed one of my pretty acquaintances in the apple- 
market putting on a night- cap. Presuming to draw a little nearer, 
I saw that she stood by a barrel, laid on its side, with straw in 
the hollow, and she presently crept into this, leaving her feet out 
of doors under a blanket. I walked up and down for half an 
hour, and saw that every one of the twenty or thirty families 
in the market disposed of themselves for the night in the same 
way. There were several couples among them who occupied the 
same barrel, (of the size of a Long Wharf sugar hogshead,) the 
husband smoking his pipe outside while the wife " settled her- 
12^' 



274 INVAI ID RAMBLES. 



self/' and creeping in very gingerly a few minutes after. With 
two or three hundred wild students mousing about for fun, one 
would suppose that these were hardly safe dormitories, but the 
apple merchants seemed to have no fear of being molested. 

A little farther around, upon the outside of the promenade 
which encircles the town, we came to the cluster of theatrical 
and show-booths, which, with the booths for refreshment, form a 
small village especially devoted to merry-making. Here was a 
circus, and at the door a fat Turk, in pink silk jacket and white 
trowsers and turban, offering tickets to the passers-by. A long 
succession of attractions followed — a dwarf and an Albino, a me- 
nagerie, a wonderful athlete, a fortune-teller, an exhibitor of pic- 
- tures, a children's railroad, and several marvellous monsters, each 
separate show with its separate band of music, and its canvassers 
in splendid costume screaming at the door. Away in the rear of 
the show-booths extended the lanes of refreshment- shops, each 
shop having its two or three female musicians playing indus- 
triously, and betAveen every two doors sat a blind or lame man 
grinding an organ and singing at the top of his voice. In no part 
of this noisy village of fun could one hear less than four or five 
different musics at once, but every soul seemed gay, and the dis- 
cords probably had the effect of adding somewhat to the general 
mirthfulness. I was struck with one novelty here in the way of 
bookselling. A man stood before a sort of a drop-curtain cov- 
ered with pictures, each picture representing a scene from one of 
the pamphlets on his table. With a long pole he pointed to 
these pictorial advertisements, one after another ; and, as he told 
the story in a loud voice, a remarkably pretty girl handed round 
for sale, among the crowd, the particular book which it illustrated. 



WADDED CLOTHING. 27o 



This was literally ''books and stationary/' (the books for saleanc 
the pictures stationary,) and, as it seemed to " do," I made a note 
of it for the benefit of the Reform Booksellers. 

Between this and the entrance to the town, there were stiU 
several booth-villages — one for the sale of boots and shoes only 
another for cheap millinery, a third for wooden ware, and a large 
one for the winter clothing of the poorer classes. The German 
custom which I before alluded to, (in my letter from Frankfort,} 
of wearing knit clothes, so wadded with cotton that they are like 
beds to walk about in, is here ministered to with great ingenuity. 
Fuel is so scarce and dear in this country, and the peasantry so 
much poorer than any laboring classes with us, that they are 
compelled to find some substitute for more fire than suffices to 
cook by, and they fairly wad out the winter accordingly. Wad- 
ded leggings and wadded jackets, adapted to the wear of both 
sexes, are sold in great quantities — the encasement for one wo- 
man costing about two dollars. It would pay to import these 
articles into our northern States, for a suit of them would be a£ 
good as a winter's fuel to give to a poor woman, and they would 
be excellent under-clothes for winter travelling and sleigh-riding. 

The town begins on this side with a gay cafe, and here you en- 
ter at once upon the crowded Fair. A new sign sticks out fron. 
every apartment of the buildings on either side, giving the namt 
of a stranger merchant and the city he comes from — tliough to 
find leisure to read signs, yon must get the shelter of a corner^ 
for the crowd, all day long, is hke two opposing tides, and it 
takes all your attention to avoid elbowing and collision. As you 
proceed, you find the street divided into two by a double line of 
booths placed back to back, each one of about the size of a pri- 



276 INVALID RAMBLES. 



vate box ki a theatre. These Httle three-sided shanties (for they 
have no fronts) are made of boards that hook together, and, be- 
tween Fair and Fair, they are removed and stowed away. They 
are the property of the town, and are let to the traders for three 
weeks. The people who occupy booths, mostly live in them, hav- 
ing about as spacious accommodations as the apple women in 
their barrels ; though how they get in, or sit down, or stretch them- 
selves to sleep, are mysteries I was not lucky enough to unravel. 
It would be another mystery how these pretty sales-women keep 
warm, (for there they stand all day, in full toilette, selling to 
customers who are exercising in their cloaks,) but that one knows 
what wadded envelopings are for sale in the neighborhood. Most 
of them speak French, and (industry, accomplishments, priva- 
tions and all) they seem wives or daughters of most profitable 
exemplariness. 

The rambles among the booths in the squares are the most 
.*^- 'Using, because ,the lanes are as narrow as a church aisle, and 
you pass between two rows of little shops with the goods on 
either side within reach of your arm — meanwhile, moreover, 
running a gauntlet of persuasions to purchase. Some particular 
article is usually recommended to you as you pass, and it is gen- 
erally 'chosen with skillful reference to your appearance. As the 
Gperman vfomen do their year's shopping at Fair time, and come 
to Leipsic at this season from all the country around, {to have 
their gadding and money -spending in one holiday lump,) you can 
imagine why the scene is untiringly- gay for two or three weeks, 
and why there is little difference in the crowd from breakfast to 
twilight. The great values exchanged at the Fair are, 6f course, 
managed by samples and in warehouses out of sight, but there is 



PIPE CELEBRITY 2l1 



a retail, apparently of every article on earth, carried on out of 
doors at the same time, and no museum could be more interesting 
than this strange aggregation, at one time and place, of supplies 
for the wants of all climates and customs. Everything is here. 
All that you could find in the Strand of London, in the Bezestein 
of Constantinople, in the Bazaars of Persia, in the windows of 
Maiden Lane, in the porticoes of the tropics, in the studios of 
Italy, in the tents of Hudson's Bay, or in the shops of Paris or 
Pekin, is laid out on these open counters in an array of ''parlous'^ 
temptation ! One should put his money into the hands of an 
'^ assignee" before he takes a walk in the Fair of Leipsic. 

The feature that strikes the stranger more particularly, is the 
large proportion of pipe shops — one-half the trade of the Fair, 
at least, seeming to lie in this single article of merchandise. The 
variety of shape and embellishment is very great, as it may well 
be, in this proper pipe-land, where there is no luxury which takes 
precedence of smoking — the wealthy German having frequently. 
his room hung round with scores of expensive pipes, and his 
servant devoted exclusively to the care of them. The pictures, 
beautifully enamelled upon the bowls of the pipes, are addressed, 
of course, to the tastes of the buyers, and the great majority are 
of a voluptuous character ; but it is a common tribute -to the 
popular idols in history, politics or religion, to carry their portraits . 
on the pipe, and just now the head of Ronge, the Reformer, is 
the prevailing favorite. As every man in the land makes an in- 
separable companion of his pipe, and, as the avenues to celebrity 
are very few in a country where there is no freedom of the press, 
this kind of pipe-immortality is much valued. 

The great preponderance, in the Fair, of articles for gifts, shows 



278 INVALID RAMBLES. 



the well-known affectionateness in the German character — their 
habits of endearing themselves to friends and relatives by making 
presents, creating an immense traffick in trifles purely ornamental. 
This beautiful trait seems to extend to the lowest classes, and it 
is very curious to see the numberless varieties of little gaudy 
^^ fairings'' and keepsakes which are adapted to the limited means 
of the poor. Among other keepsakes, I observed that there was 
a large sale of garters with poetry inscribed on them. They were 
elastic and painted to imitate wreaths of roses. I bought a pair 
for sixpence with a verse upon each, of which the following 
exhortation to industry and love is a literal translation : — 

While night with morning lingers, 

Awake and stirring be, 
And with your pretty fingers 

Clasp this about your knee. 
When day with eve reposes 

And stars begin to see, 
Unclasp this band of roses, 

And, Nearest, think of me ! 

This is poetry where we are not in the habit of looking for it, 
but, to the taste of the humble and virtuous, not misplaced. 
Honi soit qui mal y pense, as says the classic moral of the garter. 

The articles for sale throughout the Fair would make a long 
catalogue, of course, and I wish only to speak of such as are 
peculiar to the country. A kind of in-doors overshoe, made of 
felt, half an inch thick, is a clumsy comfort, exclusively German, 
I believe, and sold here in great quantities. I have already ex- 
plained that the economical classes wear their fuel, (in cotton 
wadding,) and that the whole population wear their sidewalks (in 



RESOURCE OF SMOKING. 279 



heavy boots.) Each individual, in doors, wears his carpet in the 
same way, in a pair of these felt shoes. The German houses 
have wooden floors and staircases, neatly waxed, but no carpets, 
except a small rug to step out of bed upon, and the German 
doctors say that the fine dust, continually sent up from a carpet, 
is very injurious to the lungs. The Germans {apropos) are also 
their own fences, the whole country being unenclosed, and the 
cows being sent out to graze with children and women to walk 
round them all day long. As a plastic cosmopolite, one does in 
Germany as Germans do — that is to say, wears his fire-place, and 
his sidewalk and carpet — but one becomes, by the transfer, as 
inelegant as the Germans proverbially are ; and, for one, I prefer 
a country where flag-stones, fuel and Kidderminster are not 
parts of a walking gentleman. I presume also that the wives 
and daughters of American farmers would as lief not do duty as 
fences — centuries older than ours as is the civilization of the 
country where it is done. 

Another German feature of the Fair is the innumerable variety 
of conveniences for carrying cigars and tobacco — the cigar-cases 
and tobacco-pouches being, now, of all degrees of ingenuity, ele- 
gance and expensiveness. The degree of resource that smoking is, 
to the Germans of all ages and classes, is wonderful, most of them 
having the pipe in the mouth literally three-fourths of the time, 
and flying to it from all kinds of annoyance and restlessness. 
What excitements it takes the place of — what, in our country, 
correspondently absorbs enthusiasm and quiets the nerves — would 
be a curious matter of speculation. I should not be surprised if 
tobacco stood the Germans instead of newspaper virulence and 
highly-spiced politics— instead of the getting up of sham en- 



280 INVALID RAMBLES. 



thusiasms and the gladiatorship of private character — excite- 
ments which are wanting in Germany. There may be a " file for 
the viper" in the favorite weed of Captain Bobadil. 



VI. 



The costumes seen at Leipsic, during the Fair, follow th^ 
luxuriance of the city architecture. In my daily rambles through 
the crowded labyrinths of the booths, I became familiarized 
with several that, at first, struck me as exceedingly novel. 
Among these were some of the Jewish merchants, who, below 
the eyes, were all beard and bombazine — their long black robes 
sweeping the ground, and their beards down to their girdles — yet 
who, withal, wore fashionable hats ! You can fancy how Shylock 
would look, on the stage, in a modern beaver ! There were, 
perhaps, twenty or thirty of these Polish Jews, with whose noses 
and beards (for we could hardly say we saw their faces) we 
became acquainted by meeting them daily. It is odd, by the 
way, how much it retards and embarrasses one's judgment of a 
man to have his mouth concealed by a full beard ; and one won- 
ders, after a little studying of the unshaved, that men are willing, 
(since Providence has furnished them with a natural mask,) to 
walk this unsafe world with such a tell-tale of the character, as 
the mouth, uncovered. I tried in vain to make up my mind as 
to whether these Hebrews were refined or coarse, good-tempered 
or bad, spirited or dogged — points which you decide at a glance 
when you see the mouth ; but, though their hats and long robes 
together gave them a ludicrous appearance, they were, otherwise, 
mere automaton-like figures, moving about without expression. 



DISGUISE OF BEARDS. 281 



and seemed, to me, only to differ from each other hke bales of 
goods of different length and bulk. It needs some symptoms of 
a white shirt, moreover, to relieve the hruin-look of an animal as 
black and hairy as these spectacles of beard/md bombazine ; and, 
whether it is from seeing caricatures of the devil hiding his cloven 
foot in a priest's long gown, or from some other reason, a man 
scarce looks honest, to my eye at least, without some show of his 
locomotives. 

On the whole, as you see, I thought these plump Israelites 
dressed very unbecomingly, though, perhaps, as to economy and 
self-command, very Jez^j-diciously. 

I need not describe, of course, the well-known customs of the 
Turks, Greeks, and Armenians, whose bright colors were sprinkled 
showily over the crowd. The Tyrolese dress, too, is familiar, 
through prints and ballet-dancers — the tall hat, like an inverted 
morning glory, tied with a gold tassel, the laced boot and the 
short petticoat of green cloth. The men and girls, of this class 
of the Leipsic traders, are principally pedlers of gloves, watch- 
guards, suspenders, garters, etc., and they go about with a box 
of their wares slung over the shoulder, offering them to passers- 
by with proverbial attractiveness of manner. I saw no Tyrolese 
whose countenance did not seem to me a fine and honest one, 
and, with one or two of them, by little purchases and constant 
meeting in the booths and coffee gardens, my brother and I be- 
came somewhat acquainted. 

There were various different costumes worn by the peasants 
from the different mountain regions of Germany, only one of 
which was entirely new to me. This was a female dress, which 
slightly altered the geography of modesty — most carefully con- 



282 INVALID RAMBLES 



cealing the cliin, and yet with the petticoat shortened up to the 
knee. The head-dress was of black silk, and set upon the back 
of the head with a high frame ; but with a curtain which formed 
a sort of close bag, tightly drawn to the hollow of the under 
lip, and thence falling below, over the throat and shoulders, and 
tucked into the bodice. The best specimen of this costume that 
we saw was a most carefully-dressed girl of eighteen or twenty, 
who followed a lady about the Fair, probably her servant. We 
met them for several days, and watched the girl closely, to dis- 
cover whether her chin was ever released from its black-silk 
imprisonment. She managed it like a point of propriety, how- 
ever, carrying her head like a boy with a stiff shirt-collar, and 
never turning it without turning the whole body ; though, how a 
peasant could submit to the constraint of such a fashion, we were 
puzzled to understand. She, and the others who were dressed 
like her, wore blue woollen stockings, and showed the moun- 
taineer shapeliness of limb. I could not discover from what part 
of highland Germany these chin-shamed damsels came. It 
occurs to me, while remembering their head-dress, by the way, 
that ifc exactly does the office of a man's full beard, (in concealing 
the chin and throat,) and the fashion may have had its origin in 
an attempt by the other sex to imitate the covering of Nature 
vthich we, with soap and razor, displace so^ perseveringly. The 
Turkish costume, you remember, however, expresses a natural 
modesty of chin — the men concealing it by the beard, and the 
women most guardedly by the folds of the yasbmac. The subject 
is open to the researches of the learned ! 

My jotting-book has one memorandum more on the subject of 
head-dresses. Attracted by a most, picturesque-looking dame 



GOOD MIDDLE-AGED CAPS. 283 



behind the counter, we entered a refreshment booth, one after- 
noon, in the quarter of the Fair devoted to shows and theatricals. 
A gaudy sign outside set forth that the occupants were Dutch, 
and sold drinks from Amsterdam. Three female minstrels were 
playing on their harps and singing, in a recess half hidden by a 
curtain, and two very modest maidens came forward to receive 
our orders. The old woman and her two waiting-maids wore a 
kind of cap which I must describe for the benefit of such ladies 
as have the misfortune to be secretly middle-aged. In outline, 
then, this pretty disguiser of age was something like a lace 
helmet. It was made of embroidered lace, and completely cover- 
ed the forehead to the eyebrows, fitting closely to the beautiful 
curves of the head, and only raised sufficiently on the back to 
accommodate the unseen knot of hair. Under the cap was visible 
a sort of gold corset, which came forward in two embracing 
clasps to the temples, and held the edge of the cap tightly over 
the crow's-feet corner of the eyes. The lace edging, with this 
restraint, descended along the cheek and fell off like relaxed 
wings over the shoulders, exceedingly embellishing even the 
young girls, whose hair, foreheads and temples it completely con- 
cealed. This is a very common cap, I was told, among the 
peasants of Holland, but a more becoming one I never saw, for 
either old or young ; and certainly, as a disguiser of delinquent 
hair and other blemished neighborhoods, it is worth claiming and 
copying from our Dutch ancestors. Some people think it trifling, 
in those who are no longer young, to be particular in dress ; but 
it seems to me, on the contrary, that it is a debt which woman 
more especially owes to the general sense of beauty. It is a pity 
they 7nust grow less lovely without, as they grow more lovely 



284 INVALID RAMBLES. 



within — pity that the soul embellishes always at the expense of 
the body ; but, since the ravages of the exterior, which feeling 
and experience plunder so mercilessly, can be concealed with 
beautiful fabrics, should not the art of disguising age, (ut mos est 
mulieribus,) be encouraged rather than ridiculed ? Thus moral- 
ized we, at least, over the tepid "schnapps,'' which we called for 
as an excuse for a half-hour's seat in the booth of the Amster- 
dammers. 

There is a class of Hungarian peasants who frequent the Fair, 
and whose dress, though principally made up of tatters, is re- 
markably picturesque. Their limbs and bodies are literally cov- 
ered with loose rags tied on wdth twine ; but they wear a dirty, 
slouched hat, and a short, dirty cloak, wdth a grace that is truly 
singular. They all seem to follow the same vocation, peddlers 
of mouse -traps and other little articles made of wire ; but the ten 
or fifteen who were strolling about Leipsic were all youths of 
marked natural beauty ; and, in truth, they looked to me more 
like gentlemen in disguise than the beggars they partly were. 
These common Hungarians have rather a gipsy ish look — their 
brown eyes, and straight black locks, betraying the oriental blood 
that has crept up the Danube ; and the expression of their faces, 
too, has the stamp of that indomitable wildness that fled from 
the proselytism of Timour Beg. Their hats, cloaks, and skins 
are all of one color, a kind of smoked-brown, that would tell ad- 
mirably in a picture. And I wonder, apropos, that artists do not 
make a yearly pilgrimage to Leipsic, where they might copy from 
life, in one month, figures of greater variety and picturesqueness, 
than could be met with in years of travel. 

The students add not a little to the variety of the costume of 



GERMAN STUDENTS. 285 



Xeipsic. The University is the most expensive and fashionable 
one of Germany, and the sons of the wealthier classes and the 
young nobility are usually educated here. Another university, 
that of Halle, being v^ithin a short ride by railroad, and Leipsic 
being the nearest large town, the bloods of that " cradle of knowl- 
edge" are here in great numbers during the Fair. These Ger- 
man students are quite the most luxuriant specimens of juvenes- 
cence that I have yet met ; and, indeed, one who has only seen 
youth under the restraint of other countries, looks at them as an 
English gardener, who had never seen a grape-vine except as it 
was trimmed of its superfluous growth to bear fruit, would look 
at a wild grape-vine smothering trees in the American woods. 
The despotic governments of the continent have made the discov- 
ery that a man's brain must let off, sooner or later, a certain 
quantity of the gas of insubordination ; and, by encouraging the 
opening of the bluster-valves during college life, they find that 
the stuff for patriotism works pretty well off while the beard is 
growing, leaving the graduating scholars with a surfeit of vapor- 
ing, ready to shave and become orderl}^ subjects. License, 
incredible, except with this accounting for, is granted to the Ger- 
man students, and they drink, strut, dress oddly, fight duels and 
talk treason, with an irresponsibility of fling that would enchant 
the wild boys of Mississippi. Most of them have a scar across 
the cheek, and wear a broad ribbon over the breast, marked with 
the number of their sword encounters — these battles being only 
perilous to nose and cheek, from the way in which they are pad- 
ded up for action ; but, altogether — strut, wound and ribbon- 
they are the most Alsatian and galliard-looking of juveniles, par- 
ticularly in their more showy suits of toggery. Their necessary 



286 INVALID RAMBLES. 



practice in fencing develop es the chest very finely, and they 
usually carry their clothes v^ith a good air ; but it was droll to see 
upon what shocking bad })oots they were willing to wear very 
long spurs, and how unsuspicious was their coxcombry, with ter- 
rible shortcomings of their wearing in the coats and trowsers 
they had designed. Here and there was a magnificent fellow, 
however, and I picked out eight or ten among the scores I saw 
daily at the Fair and at the coffee-gardens, whose companionship 
seemed very attractive, if one were an idle ornamental. A very 
popular dress seemed to be a sort of horseman's uniform. It 
consisted of wash-leather tights, with boots up to the thigh ; a 
short, collarless, sky-blue frock, worked all over with black braid, 
and buttoned up to the throat, a loose girth of heavy cord slung 
over from shoulder to hip, a heavy whip in hand, and spurs as 
long as a toasting-fork. With a little cap like the top of a mus- 
tard-pot, and moustache a la sign-post — the dress was that of a 
very striking-looking customer. Long hair is very much the 
fashion among them, and they almost invariably wear the shirt- 
collar in the style of spread bread-and-butter. They seem to 
think it looks fierce to show the Adam's apple. No two of them, 
however, were dressed alike, and, to a man who wishes to see 
bold experiments in coats, trowsers, and moustaches, Leipsic would 
be an interesting field of observation. 

I have omitted to mention, by the way, a class whose exterior 
struck me more than any that I have described — I mean a class 
of mere Iceepers-warm — whose corresponding stratum of human 
nature I never saw in any other country. There were, perhaps, 
a half dozen of them, creeping about the Fair. They were not 
beggars, though they seemed to have no vocation except to walk 



DRESDEN. 287 



about with their h- ads shrunk under, as if with a tendency to be 
beasts. I tried ir fain to catch the eye of one of them, or to find 
any one who could make a guess of what they were. Skins, with 
the fur turned inwards, and matted with filth, as if they slept on 
the ground and never even shook themselves in rising, were their 
only covering, except strong shoes. Even the fur caps on their 
heads were tangled with their hair, beard, and eyebrows, and 
evidently were never taken off; and, by the look of what skin was 
visible about the eyes, and other unerring symptoms, it was quite 
evident that they never shaved, washed, combed, or undressed. 
They were the first human beings I ever saw, who, being sane, 
healthy, and not beggars, were utterly without thought of their 
appearance. People who had more the look of men *' surnamed 
Iscariot'' could scarcely be conceived. 



VII. 



After having passed a month with my brother at Leipsic, I 
took advantage of a day, that looked like the beginning of the 
Indian Summer, to plead for a vacation from crotchets and quav- 
ers, and a flying visit to Dresden. I had been a lodger, during 
my stay, in the same house with my brother — a boarding-house 
kept by the widow of a professor ; and, as its only fault was the 
profusion of things to eat and the time it took to eat them, (two 
hours for every meal,) I may be recording useful information by 
mentioning the amount of my bill. As I had made no bargain, 
nor inquiry, as to the charges, and had given more than usual trou- 
ble — breakfasting and taking tea in my own room, and ordering 
coffee at all hour&— I expected a long bill. And so it was — 



288 INVALID RAMBLES. 

every lump of sujar recorded, and a most circumstantial state- 
ment of my havings — the sum total, however, for thirty one days, 
amounting to about fifteen American dollars ! 

The railroad from Leipsic to Dresden runs a gauntlet of ghosts, 
for it passes over fields that have been the great arena of the 
battles of Europe ; scarce a rood of the seventy miles, probably, 
that has not drunk the blood of the victims of ''glory." As there 
are no fences, and this part of Germany is almost a dead level, it 
looks Jike one broad prairie, specked here and there with females 
laboring in the fields, or sheep watched while they graze, by a 
family of women and children. It strikes an American oddly to 
see no farm-houses, no barns, and no cottages. He wonders where 
the laborers live who cultivate so carefully this vast garden. And 
it seems most repugnant to our idea of the charm of rural life, 
to arrive, every five or ten miles, at a little, pent-up, crowded, 
wretched village — like a cancer cut from the noisome heart of a 
city — and find that here live, in propinquity economical for their 
masters, the laborers whose toils extend for miles around, and 
who have a day's work in getting to and from the scenes of their 
labor, besides the evil of constant absence from home and certain 
exposure to unfavorable weather. It is, perhaps, partly a result 
of these customs, so hostile to a home, that the women of the 
agricultural class in Germany are on a level with beasts of bur- 
then — doing all the drudgery of field-labor, while their husbands 
loiter with their pipes about the beer haunts of the town, acting 
rather like farm-overseers, while the females of the family are 
farm- laborers. 

You see, every where, groups of women doing men's work in 
tlfte fields, and seld:m a man employed, except in driving a horse. 



WOMEN HARNESSED IN CARTS. 289 



or in some of the more agreeable kinds of farm labor. Public 
opinion in America would make any rural neighborhood '^ too hot 
to hold" a man, who should degrade his '' women-folk" to the 
condition of females in the agricultural class of Germany. 

In any weather better than an equinoctial storm, I should have 
felt a poetical compunction at crossing, for the first time, as famous 
a river as the Elbe, at the skipping speed of a rail-train. Its 
banks looked wintry and unattractive, however, and the tall castle 
of Meissen, (once a monarch's residence, and now a manufactory 
of porcelain,) looked drearily worthy of its latter destiny. The 
fourteen miles hence to Dresden, give the eye a most welcome 
relief from the flat country of which it has become weary. The 
grouped hills along the shores of the Elbe are bright with villas and 
with the sparkle of decorative culture, and, from a short distance, 
Dresden looks more Italian than German. It was easy to see, 
even at this season, that it must be, in summer, the most lovely 
of halting-places for the traveller. With some trouble in hold- 
ing on to our hats and cloaks, we scrambled from the terminus to 
the hotel, taking our first impression of the world's great china- 
shop, in a gale of wind thoroughly raw and uncomfortable. On 
the way, I called my brother's attention to the small market- 
carts, which were invariably drawn by women and dogs, or wo- 
men and a donkey, harnessed together. The women had broad 
girths over the breast and back, and drew with all their might, 
as did the dogs— the donkey alone requiring whip or encourage- 
ment. The three animals were apparently on a complete level 
of treatnaent and valuation » 

Our carpet-bags set down on the bare floor of a large bleak 
bed-room in a Germ.an hotel, with not a, fire accessible in the 

X<ih h IS 



290 * INVALID RAMBLES. 



house, and tliree shivering hours to dinner — weather raw, rainy 
and wretched — we welcomed ourselves, as we best could, to the 
enchanting capital of— 

" Sachsen, 
Wo die schonen madchen wachsen."* 

But for the memory of a dehghtful friend, who had resided in 
Dresden, and had embroidered her reminiscences of it on conver- 
sation which I treasured — but for these spirit footprints around 
me — I should have handed over, to condign forgetfulness, my first 
morning in the ''Florence of Germany/' Looking into each 
other's blue faces for counsel, my brother and I concluded to 
make a rush through the rain in search of the gallery and its 
famous Madonna del Sisto, though, in a less extreme case, I 
would have carefully avoided the injustice to Raphael, of bringing 
so congealed a heart to receive a first impression of his picture. 
We had chanced upon the Hotel de Wein, in the new town, and 
were on the wrong side of the Elbe for convenience in sight-see- 
ing. Our w^ay to the old town lay over one of the most costly 
bridges of Europe, (built by the sale of dispensations from the 
Pope for eating eggs and butter during Lent,) and, as a bridge 
built upon eggs and butter, I was not surprised to find one of its 
arches carried away by the flood. There were tremendous fresh- 
ets in Germany last spring, of which you remember the accounts, 
and this arch, (not the one that was blown up to cover the retreat 
of Desaix) gave way to the pressure. There is a temporary 
platform across, and they are at work repairing it, the men at the 

^- Saxony, 



"^herjs the pretty maidens grow. 



ROYAL PALACE. 291 



pumps singing day and niglit most uproariously. What with the 
hurricane on the bridge and the blustering chorus under it, it was 
more hke an access to the dominions of King Eolus than to the 
city which Mrs. Jameson calls ^' the fine lady of Germany.'' 

The entrance to the town, from the river side, is through a sort 
of long cave, which runs through the King's palace, and under 
his suite of state apartments— competing his majestic ears to 
hear, better than any one of his subjects, the rumble of every hack- 
ney-coach that is stirring. Why the principal thoroughfare of 
the town should thus pass under the King's roof, or, rather, why 
he should live in this boarding-house looking building, instead of 
the neighboring Zwinger Palace, or the Japanese Palace on the 
other side of the river, I was not sufficiently acquainted with his 
grand chamberlain to inquire — but I ventured to wonder. This 
residence of the King is siamesed to the Catholic church in the 
square, by an ill-looking covered gallery extending across the alley 
between, so that he walks over his subjects' heads, both in going 
to dinner and going to church. The latter is rather symbolical, 
as His Majesty is a Catholic and most of his people Lutherans. 
He is said to be a good man, and as much beloved as Prince 
Johann, the heir-apparent, is disliked. They were talking of the 
King's having been seen to shed tears a day or two before, while 
standing in his balcony to see the troops pass in review — the 
Prince being in command, and his impolitic conduct at Leipsic 
just made public. 

VIII. 

Napoleon said, that the enthusiasm of others abated his, and 
Tmay venture to confess, that the enthusiasm of the weather 



292 INVALID RAMBLES. 



abated mine. Dresden, with all its charming associations, was 
un-get-about-able, from the violence of the wind and rain, and, as 
my companion's engagements would not allow him to go to bed 
^' with orders to the servant to call us the first fine day,'' we de- 
cided to shorten our visit. I proposed, myself, to return to Dres- 
den during the Indian Summer; but, lest some cross-thread might 
be weaving to prevent this, we picked out, from the sights still 
unvisited — the one we could see nowhere else— the sixty thou- 
sand varieties of fragile '' vessels of honor." He who has not 
been to this metropolis of China at Dresden, is only a rustic in 
tea-pot-dom, I was quite aware ; and I was incapable of risking 
the opportunity of accomplishing myself in the knowledge of 
every known shape of clay that would respectably hold water. 

The price of being shown through the vaults of the Japanese 
Palace, where this collection is to be seen, is about two dollars, 
and it is generally visited by strangers in parties, to divide the 
expense — only six being allowed to enter at a time. Dr. Bart- 
lett joined us with his party of three, and, as we found a French- 
man waiting at the door, to offer his sixth, we were at once 
introduced to the king's dish- washer-in- chief, a dignified woman, 
who prides herself on having washed the sixty thousand pieces 
of china, annually, for eleven years, without breaking an article ! 
Her portrait should be engraved and pasted on every kitchen 
dresser for a bright example. 

After recording our names in the visitor's album at the upper 
landing, we descended to the vaults and commenced our tour of 
amazement. There are nineteen rooms, (separated by gates, so 
that the visitors may not wander out of reach of the custodian's 
eye,) and, as the roof is vaulted and low, and the light comes in 



MUSEUM OF CHINA. 293 



rather dungeon- wise, the individuals on the shelves (for there is 
only one piece of china of a kind) look thoughtful and impressive 
— or, as the Persian zoology says of the griffin, '^ capable of reli- 
gion.'' Of course I cannot describe even two of these five hun- 
dred kinds of tea-pots. The article is not depictable in language. 
But, bewildering as is the variety of shapes, it is curious (I caught 
myself stopping to remark) how the most extravagant and origi- 
nal of them seem, after all, only one's idea '^ better expressed;" 
how sure one is that he has himself thought of such a tea-pot, or 
of such a vase ; and how one would have to take clay and tryy 
before he could appreciate the difficulty of inventing an addition 
to these forms of convenience and beauty. You can realize the 
audacity of a man's thinking himself capable of conceiving even 
what is here, when I mention that the mere MS. catalogue of 
this collection of vessels (one of a kind) fills Jive folio volumes ! 

" Of course, there are '* loves" of tea-pots among them, and 
cups and saucers perfectly irresistible. It is hard to keep one's 
hands off them. Touch one, however, and up trots the irrefra- 
gable Royal Dish-washer, with a nervous order that you should 
put it down — holding her hands under yours, meantime, to catch 
it in the possible event of your dropping it. Some of the speci- 
mens are of great value. There is one set of china, which was 
given by the King of Prussia to the Elector of Saxony, in exchange 
for a regiment of dragoons fully equipped ! Three common-look- 
ing yellow plates were shown us, one of them broken, which are 
of great price— this kind being made for the Emperor of China 
alone, and the exportation punishable by death. There were two 
or three specimens of Connecticut earthenware (squash pie-plates) 
— ^in significant contrast ! Close by them were magnificent pres- 



294 INVALID RAMBLES. 



ents of Sevres porcelain from Napoleon, the pictures on them 
representing scenes of his own history. (One wonders, by the 
way, that the Saxons are content to preserve these reminiscences 
of their king's mipatriotic fidelity^ to the great trampler.) The 
Japanese and Chinese fancy-ware is as grotesque in design as it 
is beautiful in material, and shows a national sensuality, gross and 
ludicrous, without any very mischievous wickedness. Some of 
the China vases are as large as half -hogsheads — affecting one like 
a rose as big as an umbrella. The beginnings of the art of mak- 
ing porcelain, by Bottcher, the discoverer, are treasured with 
great care. They are dishes, rude and unsightly enough, but it 
would encourage a beginner at anything to see these failures, 
which are even advanced steps of a '' Bottcher," and then look 
around to see the splendid perfection he ultimately arrived at. 
Some of the things we most admired in this vast and unique col- 

* When the French approached Dresden, the magistrates of the city 
came out of the gates and presented themselves before Kapoleon. " Who 
are you ?" said he, in a quick and rude tone. " Members of the Municipal- 
ity," rephed the trembling burgomasters. " Have you bread for my sol- 
diers ?" " Our resources have been quite exhausted by the requisitions of 
the Russians and Prussians." " Ha ! it is impossible, is it ? I know no 
such word. Furnish me bread and meat and wine. I know all you have 
done : you deserve to be treated as a conquered people, but I spare you 
from my regard to your king : he is the saviour of your country." The next 
day the King of Saxony returned to Dresden, and placed himself and all 
his resources at the disposal of the French Emperor ; a proceeding in the 
highest degree gratifying to Napoleon, as it proved the adherence of a val- 
uable ally, secured the protection of a line of fortresses, and restored him 
to the rank he most coveted— the arbiter of the destinies and protector of 
the thrones of European sovereigns. — Alison. 



HISTORICAL MUSEUM. 295 



lection are wholly indescribable — I am bappy to say ! I rejoice 
that there is something in this world that must give its own 
first impression — unfamiliarized, I mean, by inevitable approach 
through a long avenue of scribble. 

The Japanese Palace is a fine structure, with beautiful grounds 
extending to the bank of the Elbe, and the two floors above the 
porcelain vaults are occupied by the Royal Gallery of Sculpture, 
and the Dresden Library. Its peculiar architecture gives the 
palace its name, the inner court being surrounded by gigantic 
Japanese caryatides — grotesque figures of human monsters, sup- 
porting capitals in the places of pillars. The same ludicrous 
Japanese columns are seen in the Zwinger Palace ; and, by these 
and the smaller specimens of images from that country, which 
are seen in the porcelain vaults, the stomach and face seem to be 
thought, in Java, equally presentable parts of the human body 
the dress as carefully arranged to show one as the other. 

We walked through the gallery of Sculpture, and saw, among 
other things, two heads of old Roman Emperors which were 
remarkable likenesses of Washington and Jackson. There is a 
great number of statues in this collection, and they stand so thick 
about the rooms and in the centres and corners, and, withal, are 
on such low pedestals, that it strikes one more like a nude fancy 
ball than with the common efifect of statuary. There is no 
medium in the merit of sculpture, and a great deal of this is 
rubbish. 

One of the most agreeable hours, of our last day in Dresden, 
was passed in the Historical Museum, which occupies a wing of 
the Zwinger Palace — a structure, by the way, that, though un- 
finished, is one of the prettiest bijoux of a beginning for a royal 



296 INVALID RAMBLES 



residence that I ever saw. This, I beheve, is the richest collec- 
tion of armor and weapons in the world. The suits of armor 
are all put upon manikins and mounted on wooden horses, so that 
a walk through the semicircular gallery is like walking down a 
line of knights in the saddle. The amount of it all seems to be, 
that, for lack of safety out of doors, men went about in iron 
houses ; for the principal design must have been to shed blows 
and missiles, as no human being except a Samson, could have 
used his arms with any activity under two hundred pounds' 
weight of iron. The wearer could not even turn his head, but 
was obliged to look straight forward through the crevice in his 
helmet. Augustus the Strong, who had the luck to be a King 
and a Hercules, was an exception, and they show, in the same 
Museum, a horse-shoe which he broke with one hand, while he 
gave a coy beauty a bag of gold with the other ! No common 
man could walk under his armor. 

The curiosities presented in this Museum are capital mnemonics 
for history. Here is the sword of Luther and his beer-jug; the 
cocked hat of Peter the Great, (a funny little thing enough ;) the 
pistols of Charles XII. of Sweden, worn by him on the day of 
his death ; the armor of Gustavus Adolphus, which he left off 
to put on the buff suit in which he was killed ; the dagger of 
Rudolph of Swabia, who lost his hand while raising it to wound 
his brother, the Emperor Henry; the iron flails used by the 
Bohemians in the Hussite war ; the sword with which Chancellor 
Crell was beheaded ; the armor of Sobieski ; and, (in the way of 
relics with more tangible and fresher associations,) the saddle and 
boots which Napoleon used at the battle of Dresden. These 
last hang up in a glass case. They are slit open from the heel 



MADONNA DEL SISTO. 297 



up, as it rained during the day, and the Emperor, finding them 
too wet to come off with ease, expedited the process with a pen- 
knife. It shows a small foot, and the sole is quite thin and with 
the least possible heel. Some anecdote writer mentions that he 
had beautiful feet, but that he could not bear the least compli- 
ment about them, and always wore his boots too large. It might 
have been in these boots, by the way, (for it was while he was 
at Dresden,) that Napoleon stood when the Emperor of Austria 
endeavored to please him by the remark, that, after some search 
among the archives, he had discovered the Bonapartes to have 
been sovereigns of a principality in Italy. The reply was so good 
that I should like, for a relic, even a piece of the boots in which 
he stood when he made it. '' Sire !" said l^apoleon, '' I thank 
you — hut I have no need of ancestors !^^ 



IX. 



We found our countryman and friend, Dr. Bartlett, shivering 
before one of the master-pieces of the gallery, (the door-keeper 
insisting on the etiquette of leaving cloaks in the hall, though the 
rooms were damp and cold,) and we joined shiver and curiosity, 
and made the round of the rooms together. The Madonna del 
Sisto was, of course, our first point of pilgrimage. All the 
world knows it by engravings and copies. Raphael has here 
given immortality to Pope Sixtus, after whom it is named, and 
whose portrait is drawn in the figure of the old man kneeling to 
the Virgin. The Pope's dues for this world's fame should be 
made out in two items — so much to his piety, so much to the 
13^ 



298 INVALID Rii^MBLES. 



artist's pencil. The picture takes to itself, at once, a separate 
chamber in every one's memory who sees it. Wilkie said of the 
face of the Virgin, that it was " nearer the perfection of female 
beauty and elegance, than anything in painting.'' The two child- 
angels, leaning on their elbows, and looking up towards the infant 
in the Virgin's arms, are in every portfoho of engravings, the 
world over ; but you see them, for the first time, in their true 
beauty, in the picture. Raphael felt the celestial prophecy of 
children's beauty. N^o lovelier images of redeemed humanity 
exist in art. The expression of the Virgin is that of one whose 
existence is illumined within, and who turns, on the world with- 
out, only the thoughtful sweetness of submission to what shall 
befall her in life. I have seen approaches to such expression 
in living faces. The picture, altogether, is a noble master-piece, 
and it doubtless does one good to lay his eyes and heart open, 
for a while, to its lovely and inspired purity. 

In this same room is the recumbent Magdalen, with an open 
volume under her breast, perhaps the most copied and favorite 
small picture in the world. In the different rooms I found some 
thirty or forty originals of the pictures I had admired for years, 
in engravings and copies, and a few that I thought I ought to 
have heard of — but the difference between seeing and reading of 
pictures is as great as between eating a dinner and hearing of it ; 
and as this gallery, besides, has been described by writers innu- 
merable, I will hurry over my mention of it. We made three 
visits during otir short stay in Dresden, and fed upon it, as all 
lovers of the art must. It is a glorious collection, and was treat- 
ed deferentially by Frederick the Great and Napoleon, neither of 
whom ventured to injure it in their destructive wars, though now 



MUSEUM OF BEAUTY. 299 



it is suffering from a more quiet enemy, neglect — many of the 
pictures going to ruin for lack of care. 

Dresden, by the way, was the birthplace of Raphael Mengs, 
an artist who painted closer to my feeling of art than some others 
who have more renown ; and there are two or three portraits of 
him in the gallery, painted by himself — two, particularly, (in pas- 
tel, representing him as a youth and as a man,) to which I was 
sorry I did not live nearer. The '* world's ninety-nine" would 
call them portraits of a plain face ; but, for the hundredth, there 
was inexhaustible beauty in it — a beauty afloat in the expression, 
and wholly unfixable and indefinable, even though visibly trans- 
ferred to a picture. He drew from his soul, and his pencil 
obeyed his consciousness, and not the memory of '^ his face in a 
glass." 

These pastel pictures are a peculiar feature of the Dresden 
Gallery — resembling paintings on porcelain — and there are, per- 
haps, hundreds of them, which seem to be a collection of por- 
traits of the beautiful women of a certain period. It is a most 
interesting variety of specimens of female loveliness, and there 
is here and there one, of whom the type in real life seems to be 
lost. I wonder, indeed, that, among all the kinds of antiquaries 
whom we hear of — men curious in obsolete coins, pipes, snuff- 
boxes, armor, and walking-sticks — we never hear of an antiquary 
of female beauty, a collector of portraits of the rarest kinds and 
degrees of the loveliness that has come and gone. It strikes me 
that a Society for the arrest, on canvas, of the most remarkable 
Df these fleeting valuables, and the formation of a gallery in 
^hich the beauty of a particular epoch should be treasured. 



300 INVALID RAMBLES. 



would be as reasonable as some very respectable manias, and 
mucb more gratifying to posterity. 

The town was stuck over with placards announcing that Strauss 
(the great waltz composer) and his band from Vienna, were to give 
a concert in the evening. The Germans, with their musical relish 
refined up to Mozart and Beethoven, speak lightly of Strauss, 
and call his heel-moving compositions mere coffee-house music ; 
but music they are, to me, (though perhaps but half way be- 
tween science and nature,) especially when played by a band that 
works, under him, with the unerring obedience of the hairs in his 
eyelids, and I was delighted with the opportunity of hearing them 
once more — my remembrance of the same band ■ at Vienna some 
years ago being still very vivid. We went rather early to secure 
seats, but found every one ticketed as engaged, and were obliged 
to content ourselves with standing-room. Strauss was received 
with great enthusiasm. He is a small, zealous- clergyman-looking 
jnvn, with pale face, black hair, cut very short, inevitable little 
eyes, tight black clothes and white cravat. He leads with a 
viohn in his left hand, using the bow to mark the time, and play- 
ing occasionally ; but, in the excited passages, turning toward the 
critical instrument and beckoning out the emphasis with a gesticu- 
lation that would '' tell" in a pulpit. Strauss looks like what we 
call in our country, very expressively, *' an efficient man" — mean- 
ing a man who can do much with little — and in this lies probably 
the secret of his success, for his original genius as a composer is 
small. The music he gave us, however, was most enjoyable, and 
he carried his audience with him as buoyantly as could be 
desired. 



STRAUSS S CONCERT. 301 



I was a little surprised in his audience. They were two-thirds 
English, and, though I had often heard that the best English 
society to be found on the continent was at Dresden, I was not 
prepared to see so unexceptionably high-bred an assemblage. If 
there is a style of people on earth, unmistakeably detestable, it is 
the English who are a little below the best class ; and, as the con- 
tinent is the place where these come to breathe, you find plenty 
of them in most public places, and you know one of them at a 
glance. Fcenam habet in cornu. But the great attractions of 
Dresden have doubtless drawn thither a set of the veritably well- 
bred, and they have established a hedge which makes the place 
uncomfortable to those on the wrong side of it. 

From Strauss's own band have sprung his two most formida- 
ble rivals in dance-music, and their new productions, before being 
danced to, are heard at a concert given on purpose. Lanner and 
Strauss have an ingenious way of getting a fair expression of 
public opinion as to the merits of their respective waltzes. At 
the door the company receive slips of paper, marked with degrees 
of approbation, and, for each set of v/altzes that is played, they 
collect a vote which records the opinion of the audience, before it 
is known whether it is the ^production of Strauss or Lanner, This 
secures an impartial opinion, and the decision is said to be very 
exciting to the Viennese delittanti. 



The house where Tieck lived, in the market-square of Dresden, 
is more sought out, as an object of curiosity, than the MarcoHni 
palace occupied by Napoleon ; but we made a plunge through 



302 INVALID RAMBLES. 



the rain to see both — the latter partly from interest in the dra- 
matic clique that was here when Napoleon was treating the people 
to gratuitous theatricals — Talma, Mademoiselle Mars and others. 
Dresden must have been a droll Httle extempore Paris, in those 
days. Tieck's lodgings were on the second floor of a house quite 
too good looking for a poet's, and standing on a corner of the 
market where cluster the flower-women. Close by it, apropos^ 
stands a cafe, where, (for a wonder in Germany,) we found a 
veritable cup of coffee. A great wretchedness for me, (the word 
is not so much too strong as the coff'ee is too weak,) has been the 
lack, in all the German cities, of this sustainer of head and heart 
— the substitute they give you for it, tasting like it with the 
resemblance of a caricature. I fancy the secret of German 
coffee has been plummeted by a traveller who thus writes, and 
whose information I give for the benefit of the poor, if there be 
any such in our country, who cannot afford the beverage : — 

" Economical substitutes have been, of late years, adopted for 
tea and coffee, (in Germany,) as coffee is now generally made 
from acorns, prepared in the following manner: — The acorns, 
when perfectly ripe, should be kept for some short time in a dry 
place. They are afterwards cut in small pieces, first throwing 
away the husk; then roasted, ground, and prepared precisely as 
cojffee. This preparation, the use of which is recommended by 
eminent medical men, is said to be valuable both as a tonic, and 
for the nourishment it affords. It is daily becoming in more 
general use throughout Germany, and may be found prepared at 
all the chemists. The blossoms of the linden- tree^ supply the 

* In America, sometimes called the lime-tree, 



SUPPLEMENTARY COAT-TAILS. 303 



place of tea with the poor. The flavor is very agreeable, and it 
is, to say the least, a very innocent ptisan, and certainly does not 
irritate the nerves. I have cured myself frequently of a slight 
cold by drinking plentifully of it. The German doctors recom- 
mend it as a beverage in almost every disease." 

The square in front of Tieck's house was iSlled with our old 
acquaintances, the traders from the Leipsic Fair, (who give a 
short repetition of the Fair at Dresden before separating,) and 
really it was pleasant to be recognized from the counters of the 
booths, as we passed along under our umbrellas. The Tyrolese 
merchants, more particularly, have a national manner to set off 
their picturesque dress, and if you have once spent a couple of 
groschen with them, they always after give you a smile, worth 
taking in a strange city. Our ears renewed acquaintance, also, 
with the different bands of wandering minstrels, v/ho are only 
allowed to enter these German cities during the Fair, and who, 
during that merry time, give the inhabitants no respite from list- 
ening. There are so many of these little companies of musicians 
that they are obliged to manage very carefully not to run the 
music of two or three bands into one ; and there is sometimes an 
amusing contention for the privilege of an unoccupied street 
corner. The rainy weather let us also into a secret of their cos- 
tume, which is perhaps worth recommending to sailors. They 
dress in a kind of uniform jacket, like a military band ; but, when 
it rains, they produce a leather coat-tail that buttons on behind, 
and comfortably sheds the water from the small of the back. As 
rheumatism is particularly at home in this part of the body, the 
defence is doubtless founded on true philosophy. 

I should doubt whether there is a more beautiful promenade, 



304 INVALID RAMBLES. 



for its length, in the world, than the Terrace of Bruhl, a sort of 
upper-lip over the river which is the mouth of Dresden. It is a 
mountainous bank, high above both the Elbe below it and the 
town behind it, and commands views of the lovely environs of 
the capital for many miles around. The palace of the great 
vaurien of prime-ministers, Bruhl, stands upon it, looking neglect- 
ed and deserted, but sumptuous cafes , for the public, occupy the 
most commanding parts of the grounds, and it is said to be a 
brilliant resort in the pleasant seasons. Howitt says, that you 
can see from this terrace the cottage of Retzch, (the Shakspeare 
of the pencil,) and, if that is so, we had the satisfaction of seeing 
it, though without recognition, for we perused the mountain-sides 
in vain, with admiring eyes, in search of it. 

We left Dresden, feeling that we had seen it to the greatest 
disadvantage, but I hoped to return to it some day in the sun- 
shine. By general testimony, it is the most agreeable of the 
German capitals, as a residence for the tasteful and quiet, and a 
charming perch for the traveller tired of being on the wing. 

Of the vast plain that lies between Dresden and Berlin, history 
says a great deal, but the traveller can say very little. One 
travels the whole day in the rail cars without seeing a bill, and 
though one knows that human blood has been poured upon the 
fields around him like rain, it does not quite remove the monotony 
of the ride, to remember the heroes of whose fame it is the san- 
guinary garden. Southey expresses the one common feeling in 
such places : — 

" Was it a soothing or a mournful thought, 
Amid this scene of slaughter, as we stood 



BERLIN. 305 



Where myriads had with recent farj fought, 
To mark how gentle Nature still pursued 
Her quiet course, as if she took no care 
For what her noblest work had suffered there ?" 

The truth of these beautiful lines, however, is a very little 
trenched upon by the fact that Nature does takt notice of spilt 
blood. It is said in an authentic account of Waterloo, that ^' the 
fertility of the ground on which the battle was fought, increased 
greatly for several years after it took place. Nowhere were 
richer crops produced in the whole of Belgium, and the corn is 
said to have waved thickest and to have been of a darker color, 
over those spots where the dead were interred, so that in Spring 
it was possible to discover them by this mark alone.'* 

I had left my brother at Leipsic, and kept on alone to Berlin 
— the most weary six hours of monotonous travel that was ever 
put down to mortal credit, in penance. Towards the close of the 
day, however, a very handsome and gentlemanlike youth threw 
a straw to my drowning spirits, in the shape of a proposal to go 
to the same hotel on our arrival, and by eight o'clock we were 
prolonging existence with a supper worthy of the Cafe de Paris, 
for my friend turned out to be an instructed traveller as to com- 
forts and provender. 



LETTERS 



FROM 



WATERING PLACES, 



LETTER I. 

Sharon Springs^ June 15, 1848. 
Dear Morris : I presume that a very literal description of this 
place would be of value as well as of interest to our readers — 
many of them, probably, not having been here, and even those 
graver persons who would not seek it as a fashionable resort, 
being, at least, liable to the many diseases for which its waters 
have a cure. These are days, when, to find a Bethesda, you 
must intrude upon a haunt of the gay. 

To start fair, then — Sharon Springs are ^ve hours from Al- 
bany, three by railroad, and two by stage-coach. Passengers 
arrive in time to dress comfortably for dinner. The drive up is 
not particularly picturesque, but it is through woods and fields, 
and this, as a change from omnibusing between sidewalks and 
brick walls, is, at least, refreshing. The ascent is said to be nine 
hundred feet, and, at the last mile, you come within the embrace 
of two wooded mountain-ridges, projecting like outspread arms to 
receive you. As if to complete the picture of Mother Nature invit- 
ing her children to a fountain of health, the hotel is placed upon a 
swelling upland, lying like a bosom between these outstretching 



310 LETTER I. 



arms, and, from below a knoll on the left, issues the milky-hued 
spring whose salutary flow has such virtues of healing. 

The hotel is a vast, colonnaded structure, with accommoda- 
tions for three hundred guests. Mr. Gardner, "mine host," 
caters most industriously for his table, having, for example, at 
present, two thousand wild pigeons fattening in his dove-cotes, 
which were caught in nets on the adjacent mountains. With a 
capital French cook, and such coffee and bread as are seldom 
found in even the public houses of the city, the delicate palate 
of the invalid is very nicely ministered to, while those who come 
only for pleasure may respond to the appetizing breezes of the 
hills, '' with good emphasis and discretion." The head- waiter 
looks like an emperor, and has his ebon adjuncts in exemplary 
training; the livery-stable turns out good equipages, and there 
are billiards and bowling-alleys, a vast drawing-room with its 
piano, and (for the romantic) a portico whereon rises a moon. 

The far view, across the valley of the Mohawk, is very exten- 
sive and varied — lacking only the feature of water — while the 
lap of Mother Sharon, spread out beneath the swelling bosom on 
which reposes the hotel, is a terrace of cultivated fields near 
enough to show the waving of the grain. On the southwest side 
of the '' big house," as the country people call it, lies a bowl- 
shaped vale, the slopes of which resemble the ornamental woods of a 
park, and in the centre of this is a village of twenty or thirty build- 
ings, the bathing-houses lying just below upon the stream. A hun- 
dred yards farther down is a waterfall, which foams over a sloping, 
rocky descent of some forty feet, the noisy brook winding its 
way thence through a dark ravine, furnished with the shade and 
rocks requisite for the between meal reveries of the fashionable. 



SULPHUR BATHING. 311 



Everybody, here, bathes in the sulphur- water once a day, and 
the " Doctor's orders" being to bathe always on the emptiest 
attainable stomach, the company is usually assembled at the 
bathing-house an hour or so before dinner. The cripples are seen 
limping their way down the hill at about twelve, and, of this 
halting regiment, of course, I am one. The beaux and belles fol- 
low a half hour later — the ladies carefully shrouded in sun-bonnet 
and peignoir. There are two springs on the hillside above the 
bathing-house, each with its pavilion and seats — one called the 
*^ White Sulphur," the other the '' Magnesia Spring," and these, 
like the platform at Saratoga, and the pump-room at Bath, are 
the places ordinarily used for commencing acquaintance — conti- 
guity and a common libation being, by usage, justificatory of the 
formidable " first remark." 

The Frenchman mentioned by Sir Francis Head in his *' Bub- 
bles of Brunnen," must have been peculiarly constituted, to have 
said, of a sulphur bath, that, in it, *^ on devient ahsolument amou- 
reux de soi-meme,^' The ladies, too, whom he mentions as having 
a wooden lid to their bathing- tubs, on which their gentlemen 
acquaintances were wont to sit and entertain them, (the fair heads 
being alone visible,) must have been willing to be admired in 
most unperfumed air, for the aroma from the warm bath, to 
speak plainly, resembles that of eggs that have outlived their 
usefulness. The water may well be forgiven, however, for it is 
certainly a most immediate and efficacious agent, acting homoeo- 
pathically, I find, by the way, in first aggravating the disease to 
which it subsequently gives relief. Its cures of cutaneous disor- 
ders and of rheumatism, as narrated by the resident frequenters 
of the lounging-places, are very wonderful ; and, indeed, the virtues 



312 LETTER I. 



of these Springs of Sharon, are allowed, I believe, to be quite 
equal to the more famed but less accessible Sulphur Springs of 
Virginia. 

The bath, I find, leaves a very soft feeling between finger and 
thumb, but w^hether it is an embellishing cosmetic, I cannot posi- 
tively say. The villagers cook with the water, and, of course, 
breathe its atmosphere perpetually, but they are not particularly 
fair, and there is no local evidence in its favor, except that an In- 
dian girl, one of the small remainder of a tribe that resides here, 
is the belle of the village, and has a skin of beautiful texture and 
clearness. The water is said to whiten the teeth, and hers would 
lie invisible on a snow-drift. It acts on metals — sometimes to the 
visitor's surprise — -as rings and chains and the setting of jewels, 
unless of pure gold, are turned black by onl}' the vapor of the 
bath-rooms. I found half a dozen pieces of silver, in one of the 
pockets of my waistcoat, completely discolored. Though it em- 
browns silver in the pocket, however, it, unhappily, turns no 
darker that upon the head— a gentleman with '' silvery hair" 
bathing every day in the next room to me, and daily coming out, 
1 regret to inform you, as venerable as he goes in. 

I have taken a bath between the foregoing paragraph and this, 
and took the opportunity to inquire (of my sulphuric aqueductor) 
as to the parentage of an Indian girl who sits by the spring. She 
is not of pure aboriginal blood, her father being a Frenchman. 
There are two famiHes here, the fathers of both French and the 
mothers Indian, and each with eight or nine children, but appa- 
rently in very different degrees of prosperity — one occupying a 
handsome two-story house in the village, the other living in a 
t^nt up the ravine. They make baskets, fans, bows-and-arrows, 



INDIAN EMPLOYMENTS. 313 



etc., for sale, and visits to them are among the amusements of the 
strangers at the Springs. 

I think, with the foregoing most categorical account of Sharon, 
I will stop — though a return to my own society, (of which a 
complete monopoly has given me rather a surfeit,) is the alterna- 
tive of writing, and I would scribble away for an hour or two 
longer, if my damaged eyes would let me. 



VOL. I. 14 



LETTER II. 

Sharon Springs, June, 1848. 
Dear Morris : I should have been half-way down this page — 
perhaps ready to blot and turn over — but for an attraction on the 
portico, which you, of course, suppose to have been a lady. 
Many, however, as are the new arrivals to-day in this breezy 
resort, and happy as I should have been if either dame or dam- 
sel had helped herself to any portion of my time or acquaintance, 
the delay I speak of was unshared by any seeker of fashion or 
physic — a pretty butterfly of the fields having been my only de- 
tainer. As what I saw, and remained awhile to study, touches 
the great question of comparative psychology, you will excuse my 
minuteness in telling you all about it. 

My chair was on the broad step of the colonnade, and, with- 
out thinking particularly of my immortal parf[ of which the but- 
terfly, that has once been a worm, is the received type among 
poets and philosophers, I noticed that one of these happy insects 
had taken up his station on a certain spot of the gravel- walk 
below. You have often observed, I dare say, how dull their 
wings are without, and how gay within, and how they stand 
apparently on edge, opemrig and shutting like an animated sam- 



POSTHUMOUS REVENGES 315 



pie-book of calico. Having sat out the sunsets of several days 
in the same place, I had a previous acquaintance just there — an 
exemplary mamma robin, who had builded in a maple sapling on 
the left, ('' woodman, spare that treej^) and who brought in the 
worms from all quarters to her young, with a diligence that made 
me sigh for such an agent for The Home Journal. I presently 
noticed, however, that — fly from her nest when she would — the 
robin was assailed by the butterfly ; and that, before proceeding 
on her quest of worms, she underwent a dodging chase all over 
the lawn, and escaped, at last, only by a long straight flight over 
the fields. The valorous insect then returned to the very same 
pebble wherefrom he had started, and, I observed in the course 
of the hour I watched him, that he darted thence to attack every 
w^orm-hunting bird that skimmed over, and invariably drove them 
before him in terror. 

ISoWf whether loves and hates can be carried into another 
existence is a much discussed question, upon a decision of which, 
in the afiirmative, a prudent man would make some difference in 
this world's outlays and settlings-up. We learn many things by 
analogy and comparison, Fature repeating herself frequently in 
her lower and higher lessons. Here is a brilliant, winged insect, 
that has passed through a previous life as a grovellmg worm. 
In that defencelesf and subject existence, it and its children were 
the prey of merciless birds — gobbled up without notice if seen 
abroad, and kept in constant terror when in the family bosom. 
The principal, if not the first use, which the once-worm makes of 
a new- winged existence, is to return to the gravel where it has 
helplessly crawled, and make war upon the enemy it left behind. 
It can do this successfully, for, though possessing none of the 



316 LETTER II. 



bodily strength of the hated bird, its mysterious attack inspires a 
terror which unnerves. His worm- children and grand- children 
are still there, crawling and defenceless, and though, in the gor- 
geous butterfly, they do not recognize an ancestor, he can alight 
close by the old hole and scare off those victimizing hills. In- 
valuable departed grandfather ! — eh, General ? But put this 
down in your psychology, and — if you get your wings first, and 
** there is anything in it"-— let us hear from you, in a quiet way. 

And now to business— for I sat down, not to bespeak civility 
from your winged hereafter, my dear Morris, but to give you a 
practical account of Sharon Springs and their surroundings. 

Southwest from hence, twenty-two miles, at the outlet of 
Otsego Lake, and astride of the head- waters of the Susquehannah, 
lies Cooperstown. It is, of course, among the *' lions" of Sha. 
ron. I felt bound to make a pilgrimage to it as a double home : 
first, that of the author •vvho possesses more of what is meant by 
genius than any American that has lived ; and, second, as the 
home of the bright river in whose valley, a hundred miles farther 
down, I lived that part of my life that has been most after my 
taste and wishes. The Susquehannah breaks out of the lake just 
at Cooper's door, and it is a magnificent river, as his is a magnifi- 
cent mind. As a twin fountain-head, of intellect that honors the 
country and waters that fertilize it, it is a spot that has a good 
right to be famous, and indeed is already fenced in by apprecia- 
tion, and ready for the pilgrimages of the poetical and pro- 
phetic. 

Devoting the hinges of two days to the excursion, so as to be 
at the lake in the picturesque hours and return in time for my 
diurnal bath, I deUvered myself over to a one-horse wagon and 



CHERRY VALLEY. 317 



driver, at that contemplative hour of the afternoon when the 
dinner is, 

" Though lost to sight, to memory dear." 

We began with a straight drag up the mountain above Sharon, 
and thence, for eight or nine miles, tracked very much such a 
line as a cautious ant would find it necessary to make, after the 
tack of a Connecticut sloop, in getting from leeward to windward 
across a cargo of pumpkins. Railroads and steamboats make us 
forget what hills are. In this age of multitudinized progress, we 
lose sight of how toilsomely, on the high- ways and by-ways, they 
still have to fag it through, in single harness, (No sermon 
intended this time.) 

Eight miles on our road we came to the edge of a table-summit, 
overlooking Cherry Valley, and here lay, below us, a patched- 
quilt picture of innumerable farms — fields of the apparent bigness 
of fenced-in thumb-nails, and red houses, like cayenne pepper, 
sprinkled over them. What a pity it is, (picturesquely,) that red 
ochre is cheaper than white lead, and there is, therefore, this 
economical compulsion upon the poor man, to make his house a 
deformity to the landscape ! Cherry Valley has a snug, peace- 
able, nestled-down look, its mountains trimmed up high like a well- 
disciplined military whisker, and its meadows looking utterly 
incapable of burrs or thistles ; and, as to the village, if there ever 
walked into its pretty street the spirit of scandal and backbiting, 
such as finds its way into villages more exposed, I can only say 
that no corner of earth can look innocent enough to expel it 
Roses before every door, damsels reading in every window, side- 
walks tidy, and a piano vigorously played in the parlor of the 



318 LETTER II. 



principal inn — I should scarce know how to add a charm to it as 
a home for 

" The world forgetting, by the world forgot." 

I fancy, as I saw no sign of a cherry-iY^e in the whole town, that 
it may owe its name to French derivation, and was possibly called 
La ValUe clime, by a first settler. I did not ask the landlord at 
the tavern, for he looked a matter-of-fact man and I was afraid 
of his spoiling my pretty guess. And, apropos of that landlord, 
he seems to play the part of the elf in fairy land, whose business 
it is to prick mortal visitors hourly with a pin, and so keep them 
in mind of their mortality. '* You a'nt as spry as you used to 
be !'* said he, as I hobbled into the wagon over the fore- wheel ; 
and with this most un-stirrup-cup valedictory, just tart enough to 
call my thoughts from the happy scene to my less happy self, I 
drove ofiP, dulled to the beauties of Cherry Yalley, but musing on 
the uses of pity and on the sorrows of dilapidation by rheuma- 
tism. 

Our first view of Otsego Lake was from woods high above it, 
and by glimpses through the trees which hem in a \'<^t^ sudden 
descent. An abrupt opening showed us an extremity of the 
lake immediately under us, and a town, apparently all villas and 
gardens, laid out upon a natural terrace of the bank. Away west 
stretched the calm plane of the Otsego, narrow like a river, (and, 
indeed, of the average breadth of the Hudson, I should say;) 
beautiful, uncommonly beautiful mountain- shores, shutting it in, 
and the slopes on the far side charmingly pictured with cultiva- 
tion. A lake's mirror was never set in a prettier encadreraent by 
the frame-making eddies of the retiring deluge, and it is so situated, 



SOURCE OF THE SUSQUEHANNAH. 319 



by the way, that its entire re -gilding, by the sunsets, is visible from 
every quarter of the town. The path of the eye, from Coopers- 
town to the setting sun, is up a nine-mile mirror of wooded water ; 
and, what with such a foreground, and the mists and reflections of 
its clear and placid bosom, they should see more of the " dolphin 
glories" of the West than the inhabitants of other places. I for- 
get, at this moment, whether Cooper's books are rich in descrip- 
tions of sunsets, but they might be, without drawing much on his 



imagmation. 



The steep road down the wooded mountain above Cooperstown, 
shoots you into the village somewhat as a trout arrives in a mill- 
pond by the sluice, and it was partly owing to this that I crossed 
the natural curiosity I half came to see — (the outbreak of the 
Susquehannah from Otsego Lake)— without doing it the honors 
of recognition. Over the bridge which spans the source of one 
of the world's greatest rivers, drove I, (I am ashamed of my 
magnetism to confess,) with neither tributary look nor thought 
— as unconscious of that little brooklet's capabihty to go on wax- 
ing to the ocean, as is the dull sixpence which you, my dear Morris, 
pass up for a man in an omnibus, of that thumb-and-finger's 
capability to outlet songs on their waxing way to immortality. 
(Let us take a httle breath and begin again !) 

I say " partly" — for, vmder ordinary circumstances, I am not 
a man to pass lightly over any shape of running water. Streams 
have souls — or aff'ect me as if they had. But, on one point, my 
driver and I diff'ered. It is my way, when there is a prospect of 
being admired, to linger. It was Ms way to whip up. / should 
have slackened rein on entering Cooperstown — he dashed in at a 
pace which amazed beholders, whisking me, at the same time, 



320 LETTER II. 



over the incipient Susquehannah, and leaving me, of course, very 
little attention to spare from rheumatic holdings -on. I found 
afterwards that I had also shot past Mr. Cooper's baronial-look- 
ing gate without observing it, and, indeed, if I had gone to bed 
immediately on arriving, I should have slept upon a first impres- 
sion of Cooperstown, consisting of two hquefied streaks of houses 
and a sudden stop. As the historian of John Gilpin says : — 

" When he next doth take a ride," 

(with a black horse and sorrel driver,) your humble servant will 
bargain to respectfully locate the accelerations. 

I have not much to say about Cooperstown, now we are there. 
It looks like a town where everybody '' gets along," where there are 
six or seven rather rich people, and no such thing as a pauper. 
The principal tavern looks a good deal fingered and leaned 
against ; the '' hardware stores'' are prosperously well-built ; the 
boys, playing in the street, draw grown-up audiences, whose 
pleased attention to the unvarying varlets shows that there is 
nothing better going on ; and, in the windows of the houses in the 
side-streets, sit young ladies without a sign of a shirt-collar in 
their company, and this last bespeaks a town of exhausted un- 
certainties — everybody's exact value ascertained and no object in 
visiting except with definite errand or invitation. In towns of 
this size, by the way, young ladies have hardly a fair opportunity, 
as any handsome male natives, who have an ambition that would 
swim, find the scope of a village too bathing-tub-y, and are all 
off for deeper water and other adorations. By glimpses that I 
caught, over rose-trees and picket fences, I should say there was 



FENIx\10RE COOPER. 321 



many a charming girl, wasting her twilights, in Cooperstown, 
while I saw no sign of the gender to match — nothing masculine 
stirring except very little boys and very manifest *' heads of fami- 
lies." In the great punch-bowl of a well-mixed republic, there 
should be no lumps of sugar that are not duly stirred into contact 
with the ingredients they are made to temper and with which 
they are ready to dissolve, and I would suggest to Miss Beecher, 
(the excellent apostle of loveliness unappropriated,) a turn of her 
phil-belle-opic spoon into these un-agitated corners. 

I found Mr. Cooper at home, and, as there was still a remain- 
der of daylight, he put on his hat at my request to show me the 
the source of the Susquehannah. Whether the river should have 
presented the stranger to Mr. Cooper, or Mr. Cooper presented 
me to the river — which was the monarch and which the '^ gold 
stick in waiting"— is a question of precedence that occurred to 
me. It was something to see two such sources together — the 
pourings-out from both fountains, from visible head and visible 
head-waters, sure to last famous till doomsday, and, with appre- 
ciative homage, I, mentally, followed the viewless after-flow of 
both. Mr. Cooper, meantime, was as unpretending as any other 
man, and the Susquehannah flowed away — like water you can see 
the whole of, 

, " Home as Found" leaves little to tell of Mr. Cooper's house 
and grounds. It is a fine old square mansion, with a noble hall 
in the centre, the roof and window-mouldings handsomely archi- 
tecturalized over the first design, and all within having an air of 
elegant comfort. The author's study and library is one of the 
large rooms on the lower floor, and into this I did not walk, of 
course, without some vague feeling of the presence of spirits that 



322 LETTER II. 



had there been conjured. It is such a wilderness of books and 
papers, prints and easy-chairs, as you would expect to find it. 
The light comes in with the foliage-hue of the wooded lawns 
outside, and the views from the windows, though the' house is 
in the centre of a village, are such as you get upon park-grounds 
from the most secluded country-house in England. The neigh- 
bors are successfully '' planted out,'' and the walks, in the fenced- 
in groves of those few acres, tell very little of the close vicinage 
of streets and shops. 

Mr. Cooper was to start for Detroit the next morning, and is 
as youthful and vigorous, at the approach of his soixantaine, as 
when I first saw him in Paris in '32. He says he is a little 
increased in weight — weighing now, two hundred and nine — but 
feels no other premonition of age. His peculiarly manly and rich 
voice certainly rings as clear as ever, and his pale gray eye — (by 
the singular inevitableness of which you would perhaps, alone, 
know him, at first sight, for a man of genius) — sits as bright and 
steady in its full socket. He walks with the forward-bent head 
of a thoughtful man, but his back is unbending. Plethora and 
politics staved off, I should think he might live along healthily 
with his books for several decades to come. 

We got a beautiful view up the lake from the portico of a 
very fine house belonging to a married niece of Mr. Cooper, the 
edge of the water being just over the garden paling, and tlie far- 
away spread of the glassy plane, unshared by any visible dwell- 
ing, seeming to be a property of the grounds we were in. From 
hence, too, we saw a farm of Mr. Cooper's, two or three miles up 
the lake on the northern shore. The sloping banks abound in 
'' capabilities" for country-seats, and will, at some future day, 



DRIVE ALONG THE LAKE. 323 



doubtless, be hauled within suburban distance by the iron hook 
of a railroad, and gemmed with villas. 

On my return to Sharon the next morning, I took another road, 
extending for the first six miles along the edge of the lake — as 
lovely a ride as a man would care to take without a lovely com- 
panion. It was a most heavenly day, the valves of every odor- 
ous leaf wide open, and poetry, ready to be written, all along the 
road. Most any body would have been charming to see and talk 
to, but I was all alone — that is to say, with a rheumatism I could 
easily have forgotten, and a driver I was obliged to remember. 
We reached home at the bathing hour, twelve o'clock, and so, I 
think, old fellow, I have given you, in this letter, the history of a 
Sharon day — from bath to bath — -and you see what may be done 
betwixt doses of sulphur ! The ladies are talking of an excursion 
to Lake Ut-say-an-tha, twenty miles off, for to-morrow, and I may 
send you a chronicle of that. 



LETTER III. 

Sharon Springs, June, 1848. 
Dear Morris : In these days, when Europe is a snufF-box of 
revolutions, and you take a pinch with every newspaper you 
open — sneezing at nothing short of ten thousand killed — it seems 
very idle indeed to offer you so poor a news-gay, to smell at, as a 
letter about a very pleasant day. I am not sure that it is politic. 
I feel a kind of squirm about my shoulders, as if I were being- 
dwarfed by the inevitable comparison between my letter and the 
last *' extra." 

Well — as I said, or sat down to say — it was a day, yesterday, 
when any breakfast ought to be happy to be eaten. If ours was 
not, I can only say that coffee and rolls never concealed their 
feelings more successfully. Everything looked happy. We 
gathered, on the portico, with each his day before him, and to 
*' go somewhere " was the unanimous proposition. Why is it, by 
the way, that, although we may be in the loveliest spot of the world, 
when the weather becomes delightful, we immediately wish to '' go 
somewhere ?" Is the sun's shining more sweetly upon a place, 
the way to make us discontented with it — as the way to make a 
woman love us less is to love her more ? Take this little brace 



LAKE UT-SAY-AN-THA. 325 



of contradictions out of your noddle, as you go up the river on 
Saturday evening, and discuss it with some of your brother pen- 
dulums between city and country. Woman and weather are two 
things I would gladly know more of before I die. 

I dare say you have never heard of Lake Ut-say-an-tha. Beat- 
ing me, as perhaps you do, in arithmetic, I am your match in 
geography, and it was new to me. Some one of our party sug- 
gesting that there was a lake of that name within driving distance 
of Sharon, the landlord's copy of the '* History of Schoharie Coun- 
ty '^ was produced, and in it was found the following passage, 
which I copy for our mutual neglected education : 

*' This sheet of water, which affords one of the sources of the 
Susquehanna, owes its poetic name to the following circumstance. 
Ut-say-an-tha, a beautiful Indian maiden, gave birth to an ille- 
gitimate child on its romantic shore ; and a council of chiefs having 
been called to dehberate on its fate, they decided to drown it in 
tlie Lake, and did so ; since which it has been known by the 
name of the vmhappy mother." 

To the township of Summit, in which lay this bit of geo- 
graphical poetry, the distance was but twenty miles ; and, three 
ladies promptly consenting to accept my convoy, we were off, 
half an hour after breakfast, in one of the excellent carriages pro- 
curable here, and with such lunch and enthusiasm as could be 
packed at short warning. It was that kind of Sabbath weather 
in which I^ature seems dressed and resting — every tree looking its 
'* Sunday best," the sky clear and quiet, and the fields of grain, 
like the Jews in Chatham street, giving in to the spirit of the 
day by a more quiet demeanor, without making it look gloomy by 
shutting up shop and suspending business. From Sharon, which 



326 LETTER III. 



is nine hundred feet nearer the stars than New York, to Summit, 
which is still a thousand feet higher than Sharon, was a very- 
clear job of excelsior for our horses. They could scarce take it 
too easy, for our taste, however. We travelled at the pace of an 
omnibus going down town with one passenger, reading every hill- 
side from top to bottom, as that hindered unit reads the placards 
on Niblo's fence, and giving every farm-house and its cattle and 
children, the benefit of our unprejudiced criticism. I may as well 
advise, here, for the benefit of any visitors to Sharon who may 
wish to make this excursion, that they should share the early 
breakfast of the departing guests of the Pavihon, and start for 
Summit by seven. They will thus reach their destination by one, 
have time for a ramble round the lake and a picknick in the 
woods, and adjust the shorter time of their down-hill return to 
any part of the afternoon and evening that suits them. 

The Kobleskill, along whose banks our route lay for several 
miles, is a river, which, in England, would be large enough to 
be sung about — as large, for instance, as the Avon — and upon 
its silver string are strung hundreds of beautiful farms, with 
meadows feathered with elms, and slopes on either side curv- 
ing up into well-wooded hill-tops. The stream is inlaid through a 
long mountain valley, and, like modest worth, is better estimated 
by what it brightens and fertilizes than by any great show of 
a current. Every four or five miles, the farm-houses cluster 
into a village ; and nice and tidy they looked, as do all villages 
cornered away, out of the reach of grand routes and rail- 
ways. We noticed a peculiar style of architecture at one of 
the taverns — a colonnade formed of trees with simply the bark 
taken off, and about a foot's length of every branch and twig left 



KOBLESKILL GRAVES. 327 



projecting. While the body of the trees was carefully painted 
white, however, the projecting stumps were daintily colored green 
— the effect being that of a portico suffering from an eruption ; 
and less agreeable, probably, to those who, like us, come from a 
Bethesda for cutaneous diseases, than to travellers from the other 
direction. 

All through this region, and towards Otsego Lake, as well as 
through the valley of the Kobleskill, I observed that every farm 
has its grave ; and this, not fenced in or secluded, but with the 
white slab rising from the middle of a crop of grain, or a field of 
potatoes. Among such prosperous people, this cannot be from 
any economy of hearse or church-yard ; and, as a man cannot 
very well see his barns and cattle from under ground, nor, by 
force of vicinage, rise again with the crops sewn around him, I 
do not very well understand how the custom could become so 
general. It set me to thinking whether the usual post-mortem 
gregariousness, practised all over the world, was based upon any 
strong human instinct. I am inclined to think it is. I fancy that, 
however, while above ground, one may like to shove other peo- 
ple off to a distance, it is natural to wish for neighbors under 
ground, even in elbow- jogging propinquity. They have a lonely 
time of it, those Kobleskill ghosts, I venture to say ; and if I 
chance to die in Schoharie County, I trust to be taken where I 
can be buried sociably with my kind, and not put invidiously 
away, with crops that come to light again so much more expedi- 
tiously. 

There is a ridge, just before reaching Summit, from which, as 
from the joining rims of two contiguous bowls, you can see into 
two deep-down and mountain-girt valleys, which look as if they 



328 LETTER III. 



might have been made by Nature for two separate nations. It 
is like getting a peep over the edge of the horizon and seeing 
where the sun goes to, when he sets. This high ground is studded 
thickly with balsam firs, whose superb cones give the woods a look 
like the plantations of an English park. 

There is water enough in Lake Ut-say-an-tha to drown a baby, 
but hardly more. A man of a trifling turn of mind might call it 
a pond. I dare say it covers an acre. The village of Summit, 
with its one street, and the lake, must look, to a bird in the air, 
like a button and button-hole. There are no woods on its banks, 
and the water, of course, looks glary and unromantic. We had 
no time to go to the forest beyond, and look up the finger of the 
Past that had beckoned us thither ; and, after a dinner upon the 
one salt ham which stocked the larder of the inn, we re-pocketed 
our expectations and started to return. It was a heavenly even- 
ing, and the drive home was a luxury to remember. 



LETTER IV. 

Sharon Springs, August 7, 1848. 
Wkll, my dear Morris, what do you wish to hear from this 
thousand-foot elevation above you? The daily wheel turns 
around very regularly here. Our three purveyors, the French 
cook, Mother ISTature, and the leader of the band, supply the 
three principal necessities of the place— food, sulphur and music 
—-with praiseworthy abundance and regularity. The cook, par- 
ticularly, it is thought by the guests here, deserves an honorary 
diploma — the table being of a most un-watering-place-ish delicacy 
and excellence— and, for the matter of that, even old Mother 
N^ature, if ^^a character from her last place" were of any impor- 
tance to her, might have all the recommendations she could ask, 
of her Sharon brimstone and breezes. Modestly enough, Nature 
asks for no certificates, though by the depth of the ravine below 
the spring — (of course intended only as a place for cripples to 
throw away their crutches) — it is evident that she is laid out for 
as many cures, here, as are recorded of her sulphur sisters in 
Virginia. 

As for me, (though it may sound something like a '' sarsaparilla 
testimonial,") I daily put an incredulous leg out of bed, not seem- 



330 LETTER IV. 



ing to myself to be the same man whom I turned the key upon, 
the night before ; and, if you have ever had this feehng of waking 
up for somebody else, and he a livelier fellow than yourself, you 
know the pace and pleasure of a Sharon convalescence. Let me 
add, for the information of invalids, that the inland mountain-air, 
as a change from the sea-board, probably goes for as much as 
the medicinal water, in this agency of healing. I felt my quick- 
silver of health ascending with every mile of up-hill from the 
Mohawk, and made my two best days of progress before resort- 
ing to the spring or bath. The air — now in midsummer — is, in 
all its changes, delicious and inspiriting. Everybody seems 
affected by its quality of exhilaration. The belles — (and there 
are a dozen, with as much beauty as Nature could give, without 
injustice to others, and two or three, who, fortunes, beauty and 
all, seem to be receiving the reward of virtue in some other 
existence — 

Repeuted in some star, and this in Heaven — ) 

— the belles, I say, are genuine-ly merry, frolicking from morning 
till night as impulsively as shepherdesses in Arcadia ; and, even 
in the faces of the Bostonians, of whom there are several families 
at Sharon, the indefinable holier than-thou-Sitiyeness which is the 
phylactery of common wear in that exemplary city, relaxes, here, 
into a forgiving, if not into a partaking, acquiescence. For sub- 
stantial good spirits, the altitude of this place seems to me to be 
very nicely chosen — neither so high as to distress dehcate lungs 
by the thinness of the air, nor so low as to dip the skirts of its 
breezes into the languor of the valleys. I think I shall enlist with 



INDIAN BELLE. 33I 



the dandelions and become an annual at Sharon — thus, possibly, 
when in the " sere and yellow leaf," continuing ostensibly 
among the " greens." 

I find I have transferred, since my return, a crown of belle- 
ship, of my unconscious bestowing. In one of my letters from 
hence, written before the commencement of the season, I men- 
tioned an Indian girl, you will remember, as the '' belle of the 
village." Each of the two families, residing here, has a French 
father and an Indian mother — each has nine children — and each 
a daughter at the age for a first love, and of considerable Indian 
beauty. Here the parallel ends, however, for Fortune has be- 
haved with her usual caprice, and made one family aristocrat and 
the other plebeian — given one a handsome two-story house in the 
village, and left the other in a tent in the forest. Like whiter- 
skinned people under similar circumstances, the two families " do 
not visit ;" but they both follow the profitable traffick of basket 
and fan making, and the two rival girls are the saleswomen for 
their respective parents. In a little grove on the hillside, be- 
tween the two medicinal springs, sit, all day, at work, ISTansha 
and Marie, with their prettily braided wares spread out before 
them, and a half dozen dandies lounging in the shade of each 
one's appropriated tree ; and, if compliments and admiring looks 
could be unbraided from the basket-work, to whose making they 
have been the accompaniments, these girls might weigh theirs, 
I fancy, against the ''gross receipts for the season" of any belle 
at Saratoga. 

Which is the prettier of these two adolescent wicker-merchants, 
is a topic of conversation at Sharon, which occupies rather more 



332 LETTER IV. 



of the fashionable time and attention than either the French revo- 
lution or the cholera in Russia. As might be guessed from seeing 
what effect of relievo is produced on the beauty of city belles by 
having a rich papa in the background, Marie, the heiress of the 
two-story house, has larger audiences of young men, and probably 
sells many more baskets. She is better dressed and has more of 
what the country people call '* manners" than her poorer rival 
Nansha, however — though she is just where N'ature leaves hei 
work (as a mantua-maker would say) *' before taking out the 
bastings" — though the edges of her wheelbarrow-load of black 
hair are tanned yellow with the sun, and her fingers a little hard- 
ened with twisting the fibres of the ash— is, to my taste, the 
prettier girl. There is a struggle in her manners between French 
coquetry, and Indian reserve, that, as a style, would be worth 
transplanting to France, and perfecting by cultivation ; and her 
eyes, to a connoisseur in those stereotyped commodities, would 
be valuable, as being the only ones of their kind, besides being 
glitteringly bright and fun-loving. My vote goes for Nansha ; 
and it was iJ^ansha of whom I bought my basket-work when here 
before, and whom, without mentioning her name, I alluded to in 
my letter as the *' belle of the village." A copy of the paper 
containing this '^nomination" was sent, however, to Marie, by 
one of her last year's admirers, and she was in quiet possession 
of the glory (oh newspaper print, thou great bestower witj^ 
nothing to bestow !) on my recent return. Since setting the mat- 
ter right, I understand from Nansha that Marie has indignai:itly 
sent back the paper to the gentleman in Albany who invested his 
sixpence in the blunder ; and as, for the week jast,, I have been 



SOCIETY AT SHARON. 333 



unable to catch Marie's eye, in my stroll between sulphur and 
magnesia, I presume she resents, like a young author, an editorial 
lift given to a rival. 

We have had two or three relays of '' charming people" since 
I wrote to you, and if Sharon, as a fashionable resort, is not in 
the ascendant, (look out for a pun,) it is because mountains will 
not rise with the leaven of the better- 6r6(f. The general harmony 
and friendliness of the society, here, is spoken of as unusual — not 
a difference or jealousy having come to light, thus far in the sea- 
son. Most of the families propose to remain till driven off by the 
mountain autumn, and, after the fatiguing gayeties of other 
watering-places, this will be a delightful retreat wherein to fortify 
for the dissipations of winter. 

I go off, to-morrow, with my repaired timbers, to take a week's 
ramble among the rocks and waters of Trenton, and from thence, 
if Nature tells me anything worth repeating, (for there is no 
society there,) I will write you. 



LETTER V. 

Trenton Falls, August 14, 1848. 
Dear Morris: My date will mislead your "fond anticipations," 
probably ; for, thougb I left Sharon, as you know, some days since, 
I have not been all this time steeping my brain-pores in the deli- 
cious beauty of Trenton. I did not come here directly. My stay 
at this loveliest of places was to be shared ; and I went first to Al- 
bany to meet, and convoy hither, the present companion of my 
rambles. I have been here two days, it is true ; and in that time 
one receives, at Trenton, a month's allowance of thought-yeast 
and pulse-quickening, and with some show of reason you might 
say *' write !" — but Nature, in such prodigal besto wings of beauty 
as this, converts all the mind's issues into forgetful absorbents, 
and, with the ordinary communication 'twixt brain and pen thus 
justifiably cut off, one can do nothing with one's fingers' ends but 

^ke in pleasure, or, at most, write from impressions previously 
laid away. 

I left Sharon with my timbers in good repair, and walked 
about at the stopping-places on the track, looking in at the win- 
dows of the other cars in search of acquaintances and handsome 
people, with a keen sense of privileges restored. Of the luxury 

of legs free of remainders, it takes a half-year's rheumatism to 



DAY AT ALBANY. 335 



teach the value — (ignorant mortal that you are, you healthy man !) 
—and, if life were not so short, or were it worth having at the 
period when we know the most, I should think a course of classic 
sicknesses might, with great propriety, form a part of a liberal 
education. For poets, indeed, long illnesses are the necessary 
apprenticeship — the nerves having comparatively no edge or sus- 
ceptibiHty till impregnated with consciousness by pain — and what 
you and I might have been, my dear Morris, but for the stifling 
of our powers under an unfortunate youth of health, the Angel 
of un~used capabilities can alone tell us. 

I passed a day in Albany, and, Charybdis of trunks and carpet 
bags as that place is to most people, you would have thought a 
detention there *' a bore." Places, like people, however, may be 
made agreeable by a foregone enhancement, and, to me, the dif- 
ference between a well man's day in Albany, (which it was,) and 
a sick man's day in a hotel, (which it might have been,) was 
almost as great as the difference between the breathing-room of a 
man of fashion and that of a man of genius — one having a place 
in society and the other a place in the world. So I pottered 
about Albany and looked in at the shop-windows, glanced under 
bonnets and between whiskers with the ever-renewing curiosity 
after new physiognomies, distributed my unexpressed likings and 
dislikings among the passers-by, looked no inkstand in the face 
from morn till night, (blessed let-up-iiude to me !) and, from time 
to time, remembered that I was well. I have passed duller days 
in Paris and Constantinople. 

Among our fellow-passengers up the Mohawk on the following 
morning, we had, in two adjoining seats, a very impressive con- 
trast — an insane youth on his way to an asylum, and the mind 



336 LETTER V. 



that has achieved the greatest triumph of intellect in our time, 
Morse, of the electric telegraph, on an errand connected with the 
conveyance of thought by lightning. I sat nearly between them, 
and, with the incoherent mutterings of a lampless brain falling 
upon one ear, and the easy transitions from great truths to trifles 
which called upon all the attention of the other, I was in the place 
to philosophize upon the gift of reason, and the value of life with 
or without it. In the course of a brief argument on the expediency 
of some provision for putting an end to a defeated and hopeless 
existence, Mr. Morse said that, ten years ago, under ill-health and 
discouragement, he would gladly have availed himself of any 
divine authorization for terminating a life of which the possessor 
was weary. The sermon that lay in this chance remark — the 
loss of priceless discovery to the world, and the loss of fame and 
fortune to himself, which would have followed a death thus pre- 
maturely self-chosen — is valuable enough, I think, to justify the 
invasion of the sacredness of private conversation which I commit 
by thus giving it to print. May some one, a- weary of the world, 
read it to his profit. 

I have never seen the Mohawk to more advantage than on this 
day's journey along its banks, for not a breath of wind ruffled its 
surface, and every tree and upland within reach of the reflection, 
showed its counterpart with another sky below. With the usuax 
regret that the dinner, twenty miles farther on, should draw us 
past the exquisite scenery of Little Falls, without the stop which 
is due to it, we rolled on to Utica, and farther than that, just now, 
your attention shall not be called upon to follow us. Adieu, and 
when you have read this letter, you may credit yourself with one 
sermon, if you like. 



LETTER VI- 

Trenton Falls, August 21, 1848. 
Dear Morris: In the long corridor of travel between 'New 
York and Niagara, this place, as you know, is a sort of alcove 
aside — s> side-scene out of earshot of the crowd — a recess in a 
window, whither you draw a friend by the button for the sake of 
chit-chat at ease. It is fifteen miles off at right angles from the 
general procession, and must be done in vehicle hired at Utica 
for the purpose ; so that, costing more time and money than a 
hundred miles in any other direction, it is voted a " don't pay" 
by promiscuous travellers, and its frequentation sifted according- 
ly. In gossiping with you about Trenton, therefore, I shall do ifc 
with cozy pen, the crowd out of the way, and we two snug and 
confidential. And, as poets and " literary men" are never poeti- 
cal and literary for their own amusement, you will expect no 
*' fine writing," and none but a spontaneous mention of the moon. 
For my five dollars, I was not driven fast enough hither to clear 
the dust, metaphorically nor otherwise. I should recommend to 
you, or to any who come after, to include, in the bargain for a 
conveyance, the time in which the distance is to be done. It is a 
ride of no particular interest. With no intimation whatever of 

VOL. I. 15 



338 LETTER VI 



the neighborhood of the Falls, we were driven up to the edge of 
a wood, after fifteen miles of dust and rough jolting, and landed 
at a house built for one man's wants and belongings — a house 
which the original forest still cloaks and umbrellas, leaving only its 
front portico, like a shirt-ruffle, open to the day, and which I pray, 
with all its homely inconveniences, may never be supplanted by 
a hotel of the class entitled to keep a gong. Oh, those chalky 
universes in rural places ! What miles around, of green trees 
and tender grass, do they blaze out of all recognition with their 
unescapeable white-paint aggravations of sunshine, and their 
stretch of unmitigated colonnade ! You may as well look at 
a star with a blazing candle in your eye, as enjoy a landscape 
in which one of these mountains of illuminated clapboard sits 
a-glare. It is the only happy alleviation of hotels of this degree, 
•that they usually employ a band during the summer, and, for a 
slight consideration, you can hire the use of the long trumpet 
during the day, and, through it, look at some parts of the sur- 
rounding scenery with the house shut out of the prospect. Is it 
not a partial legislation, {apropos,) that distinguishes between 
nose and eye — protecting the first against any offending nuis- 
ance in pubhc places, and leaving the latter and more delicate 
organ to all the dangers of ophthalmia by excessive white house ? 
At Sharon, for example, any man may start without precaution to 
take a walk ; but a man who should turn to come back without a 
pair of green goggles to shield his eyes from the glare of the 
hotel as he approaches it from any distance within three miles, 
must have let in less rubbish than I at those two complaining 
gateways of the brain, and have less dread of being left to the 
mercy of that merest of all beggars, the ear that can help itself 



LANDLORDS TASTE. 339 



to nothing. There are satirists on the look-out for a national 
foible, and philanthropists on the look-out for a hobby — will not 
some one of these two classes entitle himself to the gratitude of 
scholars, by writing or preaching down, (or in some way '' doing 
brown,") the American propensity for white paint — the excessive 
use of which, particularly in this climate of intense sunshine, is 
an eye-sore to taste as well as to overworked optics ? 

Mr. Moore, the landord at Trenton, is proposing to build a 
larger house for the accommodation of the public, but this ser- 
mon upon our Mont Blanc hotels, with their Dover Cliff porti- 
coes, is not aimed at him. On subjects of taste he requires no 
counsel. The engravings a man hangs up in his parlors are a suf- 
ficient key to the degree of his refinement, and those which are 
visible through the soft demi-jour of the apartments in this shaded 
retreat, might all belong to a connoisseur in art, and are a fair 
exponent of the proprietor's perception of the beautiful. In 
more than one way, he is the right kind of man for the keeper 
of this loveliest of Nature's bailiwicks of scenery. On the night 
of our arrival I was lying awake, somewhere towards midnight, 
and watching from my window the sifting of moonlight through 
the woods with the stirring of the night air, when the low under- 
tone of the falls was suddenly varied with a strain of exquisite 
music. It seemed scarcely a tune, but, with the richest fullness 
of volume, one lingering and dreamy note melted into another, 
as if it were the voluntary of a player who unconsciously touched 
the keys as an accompaniment to his melancholy. What with 
the place and time, and my ignorance that there was an instru- 
ment of this character in the house, I was a good deal surprised, 
but, before making up my mind as to what it could be, I was 



340 LETTER VI, 



*' helped over the stile" into dreamland, and made no inquiry till 
the next morning at breakfast. The player was our landlord, 
Mr. Moore, who, thus, when his guests are gone to bed, steals an 
hour of leisure from the night, and, upon a fine organ which stands 
in one of the inner parlors of his house, plays with admirable 
taste and execution. < 

In an introduction of Mr. Moore to you as '^ mine host," how- 
ever, mention must needs be made of his skill in an art meaner 
than music, yet far more essential — the art of pie-making and 
pudding-ry. Nowhere, (short of Felix's in the Passage Pano- 
rama at Paris,) will you eat such delicate and curious varieties of 
pastry as at the hostelry of romantic Trenton. Those fingers 
that wander over the keys of the solemn organ with such poetical 
dreaminess, and turn ©ver a zoophyte or trilobite with apprecia- 
tive cognizance, (for he is a mineralogist, too, and has collected a 
carious cabinet of specimens from the gorges of the Falls,) are 
daily employed in preparing, for the promiscuous " sweet tooth" 
of the public, pies worthy of being confined to Heliogabalus and 
the ladies. The truth is, that, were human allotments as nicely 
apportioned, and placed in as respective an each-other-age as the 
ingredients of Mr. Moore's pies, Mr. Moore would never have 
been by trade a baker. Happy they, notwithstanding, to whom 
the world says, "friend, go up higher !" though in this case it 
would be only in intellectual gradation, as the calling of hotel- 
keeper is, in our country, half a magistracy, from the importance 
and responsibility of its duties, and one which (by public consent 
daily strengthening) demands and befits a gentleman. Mr. Moore, 
(to finish his biography,) came here twenty years ago, to enjoy 
the scenery of which he had heard so much; and, getting a 



COMPANY AT TRENTON. 341 



severe fall in climbing the rocks, was for some time confined to 
his bed at the hotel, then kept by Mr. Sherman, of trout-fishing 
memory. The kind care with which he was treated resulted in 
an attachment for one of the daughters of the family, his present 
wife, and, relinquishing his bakery in New York, he came back- 
heart, taste and trade- — wedded his fair nurse and Trenton for 
the remainder of his life, and is now the owner and host of the 
very loveliest scenery-haunt in all our picturesque country. 

Of course you are impatient for me and my pen to get to the 
Falls — but that deep -down autopsy of E'ature, with its disem- 
bowelings of strata laid down before the time of Adam, (accord- 
ing to Professor Agassiz,) is a solemn place and topic, and I must 
talk of such trifles as modern men and their abiding-places, while 
my theme dates from this side of the Deluge. I am not sure that 
I shall say anything about the Falls, in this letter. Let me see, 
first, what else I have to tell you of the manner of life at the 
hotel. 

As I said before, the company of strangers at Trenton is made 
somewhat select, by the expense and difficulty of access. Most, 
who come, stay two or three days ; but there are usually boarders 
here for a longer time, and, at present, three or four families of 
most cultivated and charming people, who form a nucleus of 
agreeable society to which any attractive transient visitor easily 
attaches an acquaintance. Nothing could well be more agreeable 
than the footing upon which these chance-met residents and their 
daily accessions of new comers pass their evenings and take strolls 
up the ravine together ; and, for those who love country air and 
romantic rambles without -' dressing for dinner'^ or waltzing by a 
band, this is a '' place to stay.'' These are not the most nunier- 



342 LETTER VI. 



ous frequenters of Trenton, however. It is a very popular place 
of resort from every village within thirty miles, and, from ten in 
the morning till four in the afternoon, there is gay work with the 
country girls and their beaux — swinging imder the trees, strolling 
about in the woods near the house, bowling, singing and dancing 
— at all of which, (owing, perhaps, to a certain gipsy-ish pro- 
miscuosity of my nature that I never could aristocrify by the 
keeping of better company,) I am dehghted to be at least a 
looker-on. The average number of these visitors from the neigh- 
borhood is forty or fifty a day, so that breakfast and tea are the 
nearest approach to '' dress meals" — the dinner, though profuse 
and dainty in its fare, being eaten in what is c@mmonly thought 
to be rather '^ mixed society." I am inclined to think that, from 
French intermixture, or some other cause, the inhabitants of this 
region are a little peculiar in their manners. There is an uncon- 
sciousness, or carelessness of others' observation and presence, 
that I have, hitherto, only seen abroad. We have had songs, 
duetts and choruses sung here by village girls, within the last few 
days, in a style that drew all in the house to listen very admir- 
ingly, and even the ladies all agree that there have been extremely 
pretty girls, day after day, among them. I find they are Fourier- 
ites to the extent of common hair-brush and other personal furni- 
ture — walking into anybody's room in the house for the temporary 
repairs which belles require on their travels, and availing them- 
selves of whatever was therein, with a simplicity perhaps a little 
transcendental. I had obtained the extra privilege, for myself, 
of a small dressing-room apart, in which, I presumed, the various 
trowsers and other merely masculine belongings would be protec- 
tive scarecrow sufficient to keep out these daily fenaale invaders ; 



FEMALE INVASION. 343 



but, walking in yesterday, I found my combs and brushes in 
active employ, and two very tidy looking girls making themselves 
at home without shutting the door, and no more disturbed by my 
entree than if I had been a large male fly. As friends were wait- 
ing, I apologized for intruding long enough to take a pair of boots 
out from under their protection, but my presence was evidently 
no interruption. One of the girls, (a tall figure, like a woman in 
two syllables connected by a hyphen at the waist,) continued to 
look at the back of her dress in the glass, a la Venus Callipige, 
and the other went on threading her most prodigal chevelure with 
my doubtless very embarrassed though unresisting hair-brush, 
and so I abandoned the field, as I was of course expected to do. 
As they did not shut the door after my retreat, I presume that, 
by the code of morals and manners hereabouts, a man's pre-occu- 
pancy of a room simply entitles him to come and go at pleasure — 
the unoccupied portions and conveniences of the apartment open, 
meantime, to feminine availment and partaking. I do not know 
that they would go the length of *^ fraternizing'' one's tooth-brush, 
but, with the exception of locking up that rather confidential 
article, I give in to the customs of the country, and have ever 
since left open door to the ladies — which " severe trial" please 
mention, if convenient, in my biography. 

If you have ever '^sung in the choir," my dear Morris, you 
know how difficult it is to stop before the organ leaves off, and, 
with the sound of running water, which is the eternal accompani- 
ment here, I find one keeps doing whatever one is about — drink- 
ing tea or drizzling ink — with pertinacious continuance. Hence 
this very long letter. The atmosphere seems otherwise favorable 
to writing, however, for the front of the house is covered with 



344 LETTER VI. 



inscriptions of wit and sentiment — and with one specimen I will 
make an effort to taper off into an adieu. In a neat hand, a man 
records the arrival of himself ''and servant,^^ below which is the 
following inscription : — 

" G. Squires, wife and two babies. No servant, owing to the 
hardness of the times." 

And under this, again : — 

" G. W. Douglas and servant. No wife and babies, owing to 
the hardness of the times." 

With this instructive example of selective economy, I call your 
admiring attention to the forbearingly practical character of this 
letter, written at Trenton and in the full of the moon, and remain, 
my dear Morris, Yours, &c. 



LETTER VII. 

Trenton Falls, August 28, 1848. 
One- of the most embarrassing of dilemmas, my dear Morris, in 
addressing either talk or letter to a man, is not to know the 
amount of his information on the subject in hand. I am to write 
to you from Trenton — a place of romantic scenery and gay re- 
sort, and easy enough to gossip about, if that were all. But it 
is, besides, the spot where prostrate Mother Earth has been cleft 
open to the spine, more neatly than anywhere else, and where 
the deposits on the edges of her ribs show what she had to di- 
gest, for centuries before the creation of man. Here I am, there- 
fore, this shirt-sleeve summer noon — as full of wonder and 
impressions of beauty as my poor brain -jug can any way hold 
without spilling — -but, query before I pour out : — how much 
knowledge of the spot have you drank already, and do you want 
the dregs at the bottom, or only the bubble at the brim ? At 
what definite point of time (within a century or so) shall we take 
up the news of this watering-place, whose book of arrivals, (legi- 
ble at this moment by the geologist,) extends back to, certainly, 
long before the planting of the forbidden tree, and, possibly, to a 
date anterior to the fall of Lucifer ? America (Agassiz and other 
16^ 



346 LETTER VII. 



men of science now agree) was stocked and planted long before 
the emergence of Europe and Asia from the bed of the ocean. 
It was an old continent when Eden first came to light ; and if 
Adam's early education had not been neglected, he would prob- 
ably have made the tour of the United States, {then *' the old 
country,") and taken Trenton in his way. Now, my Morris, 
where shall we strike in, to the long line of customers at this 
pleasant place ? Shall I talk to you of the trilobites and zoo- 
phytes who came here a quarter of an eternity ago, or of the 
French Baron and the son of an English statesman, who arrived 
here to-day, August 10, 1848? Will you have Trenton shown 
up in Adam and Eve's time, or in the time of Baron de Trobriand 
and Mr. Stanley ? Of this long established theatre of Nature, 
shall I paragraph the " stock company" or the [' stars" — the fos- 
sil remains of time out of mind, or the belles and beaux who, at 
this particular moment of forever and ever, are flirting away the 
noon upon the portico ? If we could '' vote in" our own fossil 
representatives, by the way — choose the specimens of our race, I 
mean, who are to be dug out and admired in future ages — there 
is a bride among the company below, whose election would, I 
think, be unanimous, and whose form, (if petrified in marble with- 
out a flaw and brought to hght a thousand years hence as a 
zeolite of the eighteenth century,) would assuredly make those 
unborn geologists sigh not to have lived in our days of woman. 

She is indeed a ch , but, for further particulars, see pos-t- 

script. 

I was here twenty years ago, but the fairest things slip easiest 
out of the memory, and I had half forgotten Trenton. To tell 
the truth, I was a little ashamed, to compare the faded and shabby 



TRENTON FALLS. 347 



picture of it, in my mind, with the reahty before me ; and, if the 
waters of the Falls had been, by any likelihood, the same that 
flowed over when I was here before, I should have looked them 
in the face, I think, with something of the embarrassment with 
which one meets, half-rememberingly, after years of separation, 
the ladies one has vowed to love forever. How is it with you, 
my dear friend ? Have you, as a general thing, been constant 
to waterfalls, (fee, (fee, (fee. ? 

The peculiarity of Trenton Falls, I fancy, consists a good deal 
in the space in which you are compelled to see them. You walk 
a few steps from the hotel, through the wood, and come to a 
descending staircase of a hundred steps, the different bends of 
which are so overgrown with wild shrubbery, that you cannot 
see the ravine till you are fairly upon its rocky floor. Your path 
hence, up to the first fall, is along a ledge cut out of the base of 
the clifi" that overhangs the torrent ; and when you get to the foot of 
the descending sheet, you find yourself in very close quarters 
with a cataract — rocky walls all around you — and the appreciation 
of power and magnitude, perhaps, somewhat heightened by the 
confinement of the place — as a man would have a much more re- 
alizing sense of a live lion, shut up with him in a basement par- 
lor, than he would of the same object, seen from an elevated and 
distant point of view. 

The usual walk (through this deep cave, open at the top) is 
about half a mile in length, and its almost subterranean river, in 
that distance, plunges over four precipices in exceedingly beautiful 
cascades. On the successive rocky terraces between the falls, the 
torrent takes every variety of rapids and whirlpools, and, perhaps, 
in all the s-cenery of the world, there is no river which, in the 



348 LETTER VII. 



same space, presents so many of the various shapes and beauties 
of running and falling water. The Indian name of the stream, 
(the Kanata, which means the amber river,) expresses one of its 
peculiarities, and, probably from the depth of shade cast by the 
two dark and overhanging walls 'twixt which it flows, the water 
is everywhere of a peculiarly rich lustre and color, and, in the 
edges of one or two of the cascades, as yellow as gold. Artists, 
in drawing this river, fail, somehow, in giving the impression of 
deep-down-itude which is produced by the close approach of the 
two lofty wails of rock, capped by the overleaning woods, and 
with the sky apparently resting, like a ceiling, upon the leafy 
architraves. It conveys, somehow, the effect of a suhter-wdiiurdl 
river— on a different level, altogether, from our common and 
above-ground water-courses. If there were truly, as Lhe poets 
say figuratively, "' worlds within worlds,'' this would look as if an 
earthquake had cracked open the outer globe, and exposed, 
through the yawning fissure, one of the rivers of the globe below 
— the usual underground level of " down among the dead men/' 
being, as you walk upon its banks, between you and the daylight. 
Considering the amount of surprise and pleasure which one 
feels in a walk up the ravine at Trenton, it is remarkable how lit- 
tie one finds to say about it, the day after. Is it that mere 
scenery, without history, is enjoyable without being suggestive ? 
or, amid the tumult of the rushing torrent at one's feet, is the 
milk of thought too much agitated for the cream to rise ? I fan- 
cied yesterday, as I rested on the softest rock I could find at the 
upper end of the ravine, that I should tumble out a letter to-day, 
with the ideas pitching forth like drift-logs over a waterfall ; yet 
my memory has nothing in it to-day but the rocks and rapids it 



TRENTON FALLS. 349 



look in — the talent, wrapped in its napkin of delight, remaining in 
unimproved statu- quo-sitj. One certainly gets the impression, 
while the sight and hearing are so overwhelmed, that one's mind is 
famously at work, and that we shall hear from it to-morrow ; but 
it is Jean Paul, I think, who says that '^ the mill makes the most 
noise when there is no grist in the hopper." I have a couple 
more days to stay here, however, and, meantime, I will leave 
these first impressions in incubation. Look for one more letter 
from Trenton, therefore, for which I will borrow an hour or two 
of the morning of leaving. 



LETTER VIII. 

Trenton Falls, August — ■, 1848. 
That ver^/ '^ American swallow/' which, the zoologists tell us, 
*' devours fifteen hundred caterpillars a week, and performs every 
action on the wing except incubation and sleeping,'' should estab- 
lish a depot for the sale of his feathers — for, with the quill of no 
slower bird can a man comfortably write, in the act of mental 
digestion and during bodily travel. If you find my style jerk-y 
and abrupt, and my adjoining chambers of thought, as they say 
in conchology, without *' the connecting siphuncle" which should 
make the transition as velvet-y to the reader's foot as the carpet 
from a boudoir to a lady's chamber, let the defects rather make 
you wonder that I wrote at all than that I wrote no better. To 
feel, and tell of it while you feel, is, (besides,) as lovers and 
writers alike know, very difficult business — notwithstanding 
Shakspeare's doctrine that '' every time serves for the matter that 
is then born in it." And so for another of those fatal too-quick- 
ities, for all manner of which, it seems to me, life is full of irresist- 
ible inducement. 

It is not often, my dear Morris, that we have found occasion 
to complain of woman's performance of her part as the sex orna- 



TRENTON FALLS. 351 



mental. In most times and places, she refreshingly varies the 
dullness of the picture of life, dressing for her place as appropri- 
ately as do the lilies and roses, and deserving, like them, (of 
course,) to toil not, neither should she spin. To be ornamental 
is to be useful enough. Charmingly as women become most 
situations in which we see them, however, they, by the present 
fashion, dress most tamely for the places where striking costume 
is most needed. I felt this quite sensibly yesterday. From my 
seat under a tree, where I dreamed away the delicious summer 
forenoon, I had the range of the ravine ; and everybody who 
passed through made part of my landscape, for, at least, half an 
hour of their climbings and baitings. You know how much any 
romantic scene is heightened in its effect by human figures. 
Every new group changed and embellished the glorious combina- 
tion of rock, foliage and water below me, and I studied their 
dresses and attitudes as you would criticise them in a picture. 
The men with their two sticks of legs, and angular hats, looked 
abominably, of course. I was glad when they were out of the per- 
spective. But the ladies of each party, with their flowing skirts, 
veils lifted by the wind, picturesque bonnets and parasols, were 
charming outHnes as heighteners to the effect, and would have 
been all that was wanted to render it perfect, only that the}^ 
were clad in the colors of the rock behind them — in slate-colored 
riding dresses, without a single exception, and in bonnets and rib- 
bons adapted, with the same economy, to the dust of the road. 
In the course of the morning, one lady came along, apparently an 
invalid, resting at every spot where she could find a seat, and, for 
her use, the gentleman who was with her carried a crimson shawly 
flung over his shoulder. You would need to be an artist to 



352 LETTER VIII. 



understand how much that one shawl embelhshed the scene. It 
concentrated the hght of the whole ravine, and, though there were 
parties of pretty girls above and below, and new comers every 
two or three minutes, I found my eye fastened on this red shawl 
and its immediate neighborhood, during the whole time of its 
remaining within view. I made as vigorous a vow as the heav- 
enly languor of the atmosphere would sustain, to address, through 
the Home Journal, an appeal to the ladies of our land of beauty, 
imploring them to carry, at least, a scarf over the arm — white, 
red, or blue — when they mingle in the landscapes of our romantic 
resorts — thus supplying all that is wanted to such glorious pic- 
tures as Trenton and Niagara ; while, at the same time, they thus, 
artistically as well as justly, become the luminous centre to which 
the remainder of the scene is entirely subservient. Do you not 
see, Morris, that, if a lady in a blue traveUing-habit had chanced 
to have passed up the ravine during my look-out from this point 
of perspective, Trenton Falls would have seemed to me to be 
only an enhancement of her figure and appearance — secondary 
altogether to her primary and concentrating impression on the 
eye. Ladies should avail themselves of such opportunities, even 
at some more pains and expense ; for, of all the chance obstacles 
to appreciation of female beauty or style, the want of suitable 
background and surroundings is the most frequent and effectual. 
And, apropos of seeing fine things to advantage, why could not 
yoUy my fine Brigadier, give us a tableau vivant at Trenton — or- 
dering some of your companies of red- coats to campaign it for a 
week at the Falls, and let us see how the " war of waters" would 
look, thundering down upon the rocks amid flags and uniforms ? 
Why, it would be one of the most brilliant shows possible to con- 



TRENTON FALLS. 353 



trive — a putting of Nature into holiday costume, as it were — and 
I scarce know which would more embellish the other, brigade or 
cataract. On the platform above each of the four falls there is 
room enough to encamp two or three companies in tents, and, 
fancy looking down the gorge from the summit of the cliffs above, 
and seeing these successive terraces, with waterfall and military 
array, precipices and wild forest, in picturesque and magnificent 
combination ! The fact is, my sodger, that the usual habiliments 
of mankind are made to harmonize with brick walls and dirty 
streets ; and, when we come into Nature's gorgeous palaces of 
scenery, looking the "forked radishes'' that we are, there is no 
resisting the conviction that we are either wofully out of place, or 
not dressed with suitable regard to the local pomp and circum- 
stance. Suggest to your hatter, to invent, at least, a som- 
hrero, and advertise it as the thing which etiquette requires should 
be worn at Niagara and Trenton, instead of a hat with a petty 
rim. There would be an obvious propriety in the fashion. Where 
Nature appears in her waterfall epaulettes, armor of rocks and 
dancing plumes of foliage, surely there should be some manner 
of corresponding toggery wherewith to wait upon her. 

We have had the full of the moon and a cloudless sky for the 
last two or three nights, and of course we have walked the ravine 
till the ''small hours," seeing with wonder the transforming 
effects of moonlight and its black shadows on the falls and preci- 
pices. I have no idea (you will be glad to know) of trying to 
reproduce these sublimities on paper — at least not with my 
travelling stock of verbs and adjectives. To *' sandwich the moon 
in a muffin," one must have time and a ladder of dictionaries. But 
one or two effects struck me which, perhaps, are worth briefly 



354 LETTER VIII. 



naming, and I will throw into the lot a poetical figure, which you 
may use in your next song — giving credit to your '^ distinguished 
fellow-citizen," the Moon, for the original suggestion. 

The fourth fall, (or the one which is flanked by the ruins of a 
saw-mill,) is perhaps a hundred feet across ; and its curve over 
the upper rock and its break upon the lower one, form two paral- 
lel lines, the water everywhere falling the same distance, with the 
evenness of an artificial cascade. The stream not being very full, 
just now, it came over, in twenty or thirty places, thicker than 
elsewhere ; and the effect, from a distance, as the moonlight lay 
full upon it, was that of twenty or thirty immovable marble 
columns, connected by transparent curtains of falling lace, and 
with bases in imitation of foam. Now it struck me that this might 
suggest a new and fanciful order of architecture, suitable at least 
to the structure of green-houses, the glass roofs of which are 
curved over and slope to the ground with very much the contour 
of a waterfall. Please mention this to Downing, the next time 
you meet him, and he'll mention it, (for the use of some happy, 
extravagant dog, who can afford a whim or so,) in his next book 
on Rural Architecture. 

Subterranean as this foaming river looks by day, it looks like a 
river in cloud-land by night. The side of the ravine which is in 
shadow, is one undistinguishable mass of black, with its wavy 
upper edge in strong relief against the sky, and, as the foaming 
stream catches the light from the opposite and moonht side, it is 
outlined distinctly on its bed of darkness, and seems winding its 
way between hills and clouds, half black, half luminous. Below, 
where all is deep shadow except the river, you might fancy it a 
silver mine laid open to your view amid subterranean darkness by 



TRENTON FALLS, 355 



the wand of an enchanter, or, (if you prefer a military trope, my 
dear General,) a long white plume laid lengthwise between the 
ridges of a cocked hat. 

And now — for the poetical similitude I promised you — please 
put yourself opposite the biggest cataract of all, the lowest one, 
where the whole body of the river is forced into the narrowing 
approach to a precipice, and pitches into the foamy gulf below, 
like the overthrow of Lucifer and his hosts. From one cause and 
another, this is the angriest downfall of waters possible ; and the 
rock, over which it tumbles, here makes a curve, and comes 
round with a battlemented projection, looking the cataract full in 
the face. As we stood gazing at this, last night, a little after mid- 
night, the moon threw the shadow of the rock, slantwise, across 
the face of the fall. I found myself insensibly watching to see 
whether the dehcate outline of the shadow would not vary. 
There it lay, still as the shade of a church-window across a mar- 
ble slab on the wall, drawing its fine line over the most frenzied 
tumult of the lashed and agonized waters, and dividing whatever 
leaped across it, foam, spray or driving mist, with invariable 
truthfulness to the rock that lay behind. Now, my song-maker, 
if you ever have a great man to make famous — a hero who un- 
flinchingly represents a great principle amid the raging opposi- 
tion, hatred and malice of mankind — there is your similitude ! 
Calm as the shadow of a rock across the foam of a cataract, would 
be a neat thing to " salt down" for Calhoun or Yan Buren — 
( whichever holds out best or first wants it) — and it would go oflP, 
in one of your speeches, like a Paixhan gun. I tied a knot in the 
end of my cravat, standing at the Fall, to remember it for you. 



So6 LETTER VIII. 



Baron de Trobriand has been here, for the last day or two, as 1 
mentioned in my last letter. I had been reading, on the road, a 
French novel of which he is the author, ('' Les Gentilshommes 
de V Ouesty^) and I am amused to see how he carries out, in his 
impulsive and enthusiastic way of enjoying scenery, the impres- 
sion you get of his character from his buoyant and brilliant style 
of writing. We have not seen him at a meal since he has been 
here. After one look at the Falls, he came back and made a 
foray upon the larder, ^ot a tin kettle in which he packed the 
simple provender he might want, and was off with his portfolio 
to sketch and ramble out the day, impatient alike of the restraints 
of meals or companions. He returns at night with his slight and 
elegant features burnt with the sun, wet to the knees with wading 
the rapids, and quite overdone with fatigue, and rejoins the gay 
but more leisurely and luxurious party with which he travels. 
Looking down from one of the chffs yesterday aftornoon, I saw 
him hard at work, ankle-deep in water, bringing pieces of rock 
and building a causeway across the shallows of the stream — to 
induce the ladies to come to the edge of the Falls, otherwise 
inaccessible. He has made one or two charming sketches of the 
ravine, being, as you know, an admirable artist. There is an 
infusion of joyousness and impulse, as well as of genius, in the 
noble blood of this gentleman who has come to live among us ; 
and, I trust, that, with the increase of our already large French 
population, he will think it worth while to graft himself on our 
periodical literature, and give it an effervescence that it needs. 
You remember his gay critiques of the Opera last winter. 

I meant to have described to you the path through the forest. 



TRENTON FALLS. . 357 



along the edge of the cliff overhanging the ravine — its beauty by 
moonlight, with its fire-fly lamps and locust hymns — the lunar 
rainbow visible from one of its eyries— and other stuff for poetry 
with which I mentally filled my pockets in strolling about ; but 
my letter is long. Adieu. 



A PLAIN MAN S LOVE: 

A STORY WITHOUT INCIDENT, 

WRITTEN IN THE LEISURE OF ILLNESS. 



A PLAIN MAN'S LOVE. 

CHAPTER I. 

That the truths arrived at by the unaccredited short load of 
'* magnetism" had better be stripped of their technical phraseol- 
ogy, and set down as the gradual discoveries of science and 
experience, is a policy upon which acts many a sagacious believer 
in " clairvoyance/' Doubtless, too, there is, here and there, a 
wise man, who is glad enough to pierce, with the eyes of an 
incredible agent, the secrets about him, and let the world give him 
credit, by whatever name they please, for the superior knowledge 
of which he silently takes advantage. I should be behind the 
time, if I had not sounded, to the utmost of tny ability and op- 
portunity, the depth of this new medium. I have tried it on 
grave things and trifles. If the imveiling which I am about to 
record were of more use to myself than to others, perhaps I 
should adopt the policy of which I have just spoken, and give 
the result, simply as my own shrewd lesson, learned in reading 
the female heart. But the truths I unfold will instruct the few 
who need and can appreciate them, while the whole subject is not 
of general importance enough to bring down cavillers upon the 
credibility of their source. I thus get rid of a very detestable, 
though sometimes necessary, evil, (" qui nescit dissimulare nescit 
vivere,'^ says the Latin sage,) that of shining by any light that is 
not absolutely my own. 

VOL. I. 16 



362 LEISURE STORY. 



I am a very plain man in my personal appearance — so plain 
that a common observer, if informed that there was a woman 
who had a fancy for my peculiar type, v/ould wonder that I was 
not thankfully put to rest, for life, as a seeker after love — a sec- 
ond miracle of the kind being a very slender probability. It is 
not in beauty that the taste for beauty alone resides, however. In 
early youth my soul, iike the mirror of Cydippe, retained, with 
enamored fidelity, the image of female loveliness copied in the 
clear truth of its appreciation ; and the passion for it had become, 
insensibly, the thirst of my life, before I thought of it as more 
than an intoxicating study. To be beloved — myself beloved — by 
a creature made in one of the diviner moulds of woman, was, 
however, a dream that shaped itself into waking distinctness at 
last ; and, from that hour, I took up the clogging weight of personal 
disadvantages, to which I had hitherto unconsciously been chain- 
ed, and bore it heavily in the race which the well-favored ran as 
eagerly as I. 

I am not to recount, here, the varied experiences of my search, 
the world over, after beauty and its smile. It is a search on 
which all travellers are more than half bent, let them name as 
they please their professed errand in far countries. The coldest 
scholar in art will better remember a living face, of a new cast of 
expression, met in the gallery of Florence, than the best work of 
Michael Angelo, whose genius he has crossed an ocean to study ; 
and a fair shoulder crowded against the musical pilgrim, in the 
Capella Sistina, will be taken surer into his soul's inner memory, 
than the best outdoing of ''the sky-lark taken up into heaven," 
by the ravishing reach of the Miserere, Is it not true ? 



A PLAIN man's love 363 



There can hardly be, now, I think, a style of female beauty of 
which I have not appreciated the meaning and comparative en- 
chantment, nor a degree of that sometimes more effective thing 
than beauty itself — its expression breathing through features 
otherwise unlovely — -that I have not approached near enough to 
weigh and store truthfully in remembrance. The taste forever 
refines, in the study of woman. We return to what, with imma- 
ture eye, we at first rejected ; we intensify, immeasurably, our 
worship *of the few who wear on their foreheads the star of su- 
preme loveliness, confessed pure and perfect by all beholders 
alike ; we detect it under surfaces which become transparent only 
with tenderness or enthusiasm ; we separate the work of Nature's 
material chisel, from the resistless and warm expansion of the soul 
swelling its proportion to fill out the shape it is to tenant hereaf- 
ter. Led by the purest study of true beauty, the eager mind 
passes on, from the shrine where it lingered, to the next of whose 
greater brightness it becomes aware : and this is the secret of one 
kind of " inconstancy in love," which should be named apart 
from the variableness of those seekers of novelty, who, from un- 
conscious self-contempt, value nothing they have had the power 
to win. 

An unsuspected student of beauty, I passed years of loiterings 
in the living galleries of Europe and Asia, and, like self-punish- 
ing misers in all kinds of amassings, stored up boundlessly more 
than, with the best trained senses, I could have found the life to 
enjoy. Of course, I had a first advantage, of dangerous facility, 
in my unhappy plainness of person — the alarm-guard, that sur- 
rounds every beautiful woman in every country of the world, 
letting sleep, at my approach, the cautionary reserve which pre- 



364: LEISURE STORY. 



sents bayonet so promptly to the good-looking. Even with my 
worship avowed, and the manifestation of grateful regard which 
a woman of fine quality always returns for elevated and unexact- 
ing admiration, I was still left with such privilege of access as is 
granted to the family-gossip, or to an innocuous uncle ; and it is 
of such a passion, rashly nurtured under this protection of an im- 
probability, that I propose to tell the inner story. 



CHAPTER II. 

I was at the Baths of Lucca during a season made gay by the 
presence of a large proportion of the agreeable and accessible court 
of Tuscany. The material for my untiring study was in abund- 
ance, yet it was all of the worldly character which the attractions 
of the place would naturally draw together, and my homage had 
but a choice between differences of display in the one pursuit of 
admiration. In my walks through the romantic mountain-paths 
of the neighborhood, and along the banks of the deep-down river 
that threads the ravine above the village, I had often met, mean- 
time, a lady accompanied by a well-bred and scholar-like look- 
ing man; and, though she invariably dropped her veil at my 
approach, her admirable movement, as she walked, or stooped to 
picli a flower, betrayed that conscious possession of beauty and 
habitual confidence in her own grace and elegance, which assured 
me of attractions worth taking trouble to know. By one of those 
"unavoidable accidents" which any respectable guardian angel 
wilt contrive, to oblige one, I was a visitor to the gentleman and 
lady — father and daughter — soon after my curiosity had framed "^ 
the desire ; and in her I found a marvel of beauty, from which I 



A PLAIN MAN S LOVE. 365 



looked in vain for my usual escape — that of placing the ladder of 
my heart against a loftier and fairer. 

Mr. Wangrave was one of those English gentlemen, who would 
not exchange the name of an ancient and immemorially wealthy 
family, for any title that their country could give them, and he 
used this shield of modest honor simply to protect himself in the 
enjoyments of habits, freed, as far as refinement and culture 
could do it, from the burthens and intrusions of life above and 
below him. He was ceaselessly educating himself — like a man 
whose whole life was only too brief an apprenticeship to a higher 
existence — and, with an invalid, but intellectual and lovely wife, 
and a daughter who seemed unconscious that she could love, and 
who kept gay pace with her youthful-hearted father in his lighter 
branches of knowledge, his family sufficed to itself, and had de- 
termined so to continue while abroad. The society of no Conti- 
nental watering-place has a very good name, and they were there 
for climate and seclusion. With two ladies, who seemed to oc- 
cupy the places and estimation of friends, (but who were proba- 
bly the paid nurse and companion to the invalid,) and a kind- 
hearted old secretary to Mr. Wangrave, whose duties consisted in 
being as happy as he possibly could be, their circle was large 
enough, and it contained elements enough — except only, perhaps, 
the reveille that was wanting for the apparently slumbering heart 
of Stephania. 

A month after my first call upon the Wangraves, I joined them 
on their journey to Vallambrosa, where they proposed to take 
refuge from the sultry coming of the Italian autumn. My hap- 
piness would not have been arranged after the manner of this 
world's happiness, if I had been the only addition to their party 



LEISURE STORY. 



up the mountain. They had received, with open arms, a few days 
before leaving Lucca, a young man from the neighborhood of 
their own home, and who, I saw with half a glance, was the very 
eidolon and type of what Mr. Wangrave would desire as a fitting 
match for his daughter. From the allusions to him that had 
preceded his coming, I had learned that he was the heir to a 
brilUant fortune, and was coming to his old friends to be congrat- 
ulated on his appointment to a captaincy in the Queen's Guards 
— as pretty a case of an '' irresistible'' as could well have been 
compounded for expectation. And when he came — the absolute 
model of a youth of noble beauty — all frankness, good manners, 
joyousness, and confidence — I summoned courage to look alter- 
nately at Stephania and him, and the hope, the daring hope that 
I had never yet named to myself, but which was already master 
of my heart and its every pulse and capability, dropped pros- 
trate and lifeless in my bosom. If he did but offer her the life- 
minute of love, of which I would give her, it seemed to me, for 
the same price, an eternity of countless existences — if he should 
but give her a careless word, where I could wring a passionate 
utterance out of the aching blood of my very heart— she must 
needs be his. She would be a star, else, that would resign an 
orbit in the fair sky, to illumine a dim cave ; a flower that would 
rather bloom on a bleak moor than in the garden of a king — for, 
with such crushing comparisons did I irresistibly see myself, as I 
remembered my own shape and features, and my far humbler for- 
tunes than his, standing in her presence beside him. 

Oh ! how everything contributed to enhance the beauty of that 
young man ! How the mellow and harmonizing tenderness of the 
light of the Italian sky gave sentiment to his oval cheek, depth to 



A PLAIN MAN S LOVE. 367 



his gray-blue eye, meaning to their overfolding and thick-fringed 
lashes ! Whatever he said with his finely- cut lips, was looked into 
twenty times its meaning by the beauty of their motion in that' 
languid atmosphere — an atmosphere seemed only breathed for his 
embellishment and Stephania's. Every posture he took seemed 
a happy and rare accident, which a painter should have been 
there to see. The sunsets, the moonlight, the chance background 
and foreground, of vines and rocks — everything seemed in con- 
spiracy to heighten his effect, and make of him a faultless picture 
of a lover. 

" Everything," did I say ? Yes, even myself — for my uncomely 
face and form were such a foil to his beauty as a skilful artist 
would have introduced to heighten it when all other art was ex- 
hausted, and every one saw it except Stephania ; and little they 
knew how, with perceptions far quicker than theirs, I felt their 
recognition of this, in the degree of softer kindness in which they 
unconsciously spoke to me. They pitied me, and without recog- 
nizing their own thought — for it was a striking instance of the 
difference in the gifts of ISTature — one man looking scarce possible 
to love, and beside him, another, of the same age, to whose mere 
first-seen beauty, without a word from his lips, any heart would 
seem unnatural not to leap in passionate surrender. 

We were the best of sudden friends, Palgray and I. He, like 
the rest, walked only the outer vestibule of the sympathies view- 
lessly deepening and extending, hour by hour, in that frank and 
joyous circle. The interlinkings of soul, which need no language, 
and which go on, whether we will or no, while we talk with 
friends, are so strangely unthought of, by the careless and happy ! 
He saw in me no counter-worker to his iiifluence. I was to him 



368 LEISURE STORY. 



but a well-bred and extremely plain man, who tranquilly submit- 
ted to forego all the first prizes of life, content if I could con- 
tribute to society in its unexcited voids, and receive in return only 
the freedom of its outer intercourse, and its friendly esteem. But, 
oh ! it was not in the same world that he and I knew Stephania. 
He approached her from the world in whose most valued excel- 
lencies, beauty and wealth, he was pre-eminently gifted — I, from 
the viewless world, in which I had, at least, more skill and 
knowledge. In the month that I had known her before he came, 
I had sedulously addressed myself to a character within her, of 
which Palgray had not even a conjecture ; and there was but one 
danger of his encroachment on the ground I had gained — her im- 
agination might supply, in him, the noble temple of soul-worship, 
which was still unbuilt, and which would never be builded, except 
by pangs such as he was little likely to feel in the undeepening 
channel of happiness. He did not notice that / never spoke to 
her in the same key of voice to which the conversation of others 
was attuned. He saw not that, while she t^irned to him with a 
smile as a preparation to listen, she heard my voice as if her 
attention had been arrested by distant music- — with no change in 
her features except a look more earnest. She would have called 
him to look with her at a glowing sunset, or to point out a new 
comer in the road from the village ; but, if the moon had gone 
suddenly into a cloud and saddened the face of the landscape, or 
if the wind had sounded mournfully through the trees, as she 
looked out upon the night, she would have spoken of that, first to 
me. 



A PLAIN MAN S LOVE. 369 



CHAPTER III. 



I am flying over tlie track of what was to me a torrent — out- 
lining its course by alighting upon, here and there, a point wher? 
it turned or Hngered. 

The reader has been to Vallambrosa — if not once as a pilgrim, 
at least often with writers of travels in Italy. The usages of the 
convent are familiar to all memories — their lodging of the gentle- 
men of a party in cells of their own monastic privilege, and giv- 
ing, to the ladies, less sacred hospitalities, in a secular building of 
meaner and unconsecrated architecture. (So, oh, mortifying 
brotherhood, you shut off your only chance of entertaining angels 
unaware !) 

Not permitted to eat with the ladies while on the holy moun- 
tain, Mr. Wangrave and his secretary, and Palgray and I, fed at 
the table with the aristocratic monks— (for they are the aristo- 
crats of European holiness, these monks of Yallambrosa.) It was 
somewhat a relief to me to be separated with my rival from the 
party in the feminine refectory, even for the short space of a 
meal-time ; for the all- day suffering of presence with an uncon- 
scious trampler on my heart-strings, and in circumstances where 
all the triumphs were his own, were more than my intangible 
hold upon hope could well enable me to bear. I was happiest, 
therefore, when I was out of the presence of her, to be near 
whom was all for which my life was worth having ; and when 
we sat down at the long and bare table, with the thoughtful and 
ashen-cowled company, sad as I was, it was an opiate sadness — 
a suspension from self-mastery, under torture which others took 
to be pleasure. 

16* 



SlO LEISURE STORY. 



The temperature of the mountain-air was just such as to invite 
us to never enter doors except to eat and sleep ; and, breakfast- 
ing at convent-hours, we passed the long day in rambling up the 
ravines and through the sombre forests, drawing, botanizing, and 
conversing in group around some spot of exquisite natural beauty 
and all of the party, myself excepted, supposing it to be the 
imdissenting, common desire to contrive opportunity for the love- 
making of Palgray and Stephania. And, bitter though it was, in 
each particular instance, to accept a hint from one and another, 
and stroll off, leaving the confessed lovers alone, by some musical 
waterfall, or in the secluded and twilight dimness of some curve 
in an overhanging ravine — places where only to breathe is to love 
— I still felt an instinctive prompting to rather anticipate than 
wait for these reminders, she alone knowing what it cost me to 
be without her in that delicious wilderness ; and Palgray, as well 
as I could judge, having a mind out of harmony with both the 
wilderness and her. 

He loved her — loved her as well as most women need to be, 
or know that they can be, loved. But he was too happy, too 
prosperous, too universally beloved, to love well. He was a man, 
with all his beauty, more likely to be fascinating to his own sex 
than to hers — for the women who love best, do not love in the 
character they live in; and his out-of-doors heart, whose joyful- 
ness was so contagious, and whose bold impulses were so manly 
and open, contented itself with gay homage, and left, unplummeted, 
the sweetest as well as deeepest wells of the thoughtful tender- 
ness of woman. 

To most observers, Stephania Wangrave would have seemed 
only born to be gay — the mere habit of being happy having 



A PLAIN MAN S LOVE. 371 



made its life-long imprint upon her expression of countenance, 
and all of her nature, that would be legible to a superficial 
reader, being brought out by the warm translucence of her smiles. 
But, while I had seen this, in the first hour of my study of her, I 
was too advanced in my knowledge (of such works of nature as 
encroach on the models of heaven) not to know this to be a light 
veil over a picture of melancholy meaning. Sadness was the 
tone of her mind's inner coloring. Tears were the subterranean 
river upon which her soul's bark floated with the most loved 
freight of her thought's accumulation — the sunny waters of joy, ^ 
where alone she was thought to voyage, being the tide on which 
her heart embarked no venture, and which seemed to her triflingly 
garish, and even profaning to the hallowed delicacy of the inner 
nature. 

It was so strange to me that Palgray did not see this through 
every lineament of her marvellous beauty ! There was a glow 
under her skin, but no color — an effect of paleness, fair as the 
lotus-leaf, but warmer and brighter, and which came through the 
alabaster fineness of the grain, like something the eye cannot define, 
but which we know, by some spirit-perception, to be the effluence 
of purer existence — the breathing through, as it were, of the lumi- 
nous tenanting of an angel. To this glowing paleness, with 
golden hair, I never had seen united any but a disposition of pre- 
dominant melancholy ; and it seemed to me dull indeed, otherwise 
to read it. But there were other betrayals of the same inner na- 
ture of Stephania. Her lips, cut with the fine tracery of the pen- 
cilling upon a tulip cup, were of a slender and delicate fullness, 
expressive of a mind 'which took — (of the senses) — only so much 
life as would hold down the spirit during its probation ; and when 



jV2 leisure story. 



this spiritual mouth was at rest, no painter has ever drawn lips 
on which lay more of the unutterable pensiveness of beauty which 
we dream to have been Mary's in the childhood of Jesus. A tear 
in the heart was the instinctive answer to Stephania's every look, 
when she did not smile ; and her large, soft, slowly-lifting eyes, 
were, to any elevated perception, it seemed to me, most eloquent 
of tenderness as tearful as it was unfathomable and angelic. 

I shall have failed, however," in portraying, truly, the being of 
whom I am thus privileged to hold the likeness in my memory, if 
the reader fancies her to have nurtured her pensive disposition at 
the expense of a just value for real life, or a full develdpement of 
•womanly feelings. It was a peculiarity, of her beauty, to my eye,- 
that, with all her earnest leaning toward a thoughtful " existence, 
there did not seem to b^ one vein beneath lier pearly skin, not 
one wavy line in her faultless person, that did not lend its pro- 
portionate consciousness to her breathing 'sense of life. Her bust 
was of the slightest fullness which the sculptor would choose for 
the embodying of his ideal of the best blending of modesty with 
complete beauty ; and her throat and arms — oh, with what an 
inexpressible pathos of loveliness, so to speak, was moulded, un- 
der an infantine dewiness of surface, their delicate undulations ! 
No one could be in her presence without acknowledging the per- 
fection of her form as a woman, and rendering the passionate yet 
subdued homage which the purest beauty fulfils its human errand 
by inspiring ; but, while Palgray made the halo which surrounded 
her outward beauty the whole orbit of his appreciation, and made 
of it, too, the measure of the circle of topics he choose to talk 
upon, there was still another and far wider, ring of light about 
her, which he lived in too dazzhng a gayety of his own to see— 



A PLAIN MAN S LOVE 37S 



a halo of a mind more beautiful than the body which shut it in ; 
and- — in this intellectual orbit of guidance to interchange of mind, 
with manifold deeper and higher reach than Palgray's, upon 
whatever topic chanced to occur — re^^ved I, around her who was 
the loveliest and most gifted of all the human beings I had been 
privileged to meet. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The month" was expiring at Vallambrosa, but I had not min- 
gled, for that length of time, with a fraternity of thoughtful men, 
without recognition of some of that working of spontaneous and 
elective magnetism to which I have alluded in a previous part of 
this story. Opposite me, at the table of the convent refectory, 
had sat a taciturn monk, whose influence I felt from the first day 
— a stronger consciousness of his presence, that is to say, than 
of any one of the other monks — though* he did not seem particu- 
larly to observe me, and, till recently, had scarce spoken to me at 
all. He was a man of perhaps fifty years of age, with the coun- 
tenance of one who had suffered and gained a victory of contem- 
plation — a look as if no suffering could be new to him, and before 
whom no riddle of human vicissitudes could stay unread ; but 
over all this penetration and sagacity was diflFused a cast of genial 
.philanthropy and good-fellowship, which told of his forgiveness of 
the world for what he had suffered in it. With a curiosity more 
at leisure, I should have sought him out, and joined him in his 
walks, to know more of him ; but, spiritually acquainted though I 
felt we had become, I was far too busy with head and heart for 



874 LEISURE STORY. 



any intercourse, except it had a bearing on the struggle for love 
that I was, to all appearance, so hopelessly making. 

Preparations were beginning for departure, and, with the mor- 
row^ or the day after, I was to take my way to Venice — my 
friends bound to Swiiierland and England, and propriety not 
permitting me to seek another move in their company. The eve- 
ning on which this was made clear to me, was one of those con- 
tinuations of day into night, made by the brightness of a full 
Italian moon; and Palgray, whose face, troubled for the first 
time, betrayed to me that he was at a crisis of his fate with Ste- 
phania, evidently looked forward to this glowing night as the 
favorable atmosphere in which he might urge his suit, with Nature 
pleading in his behalf. The reluctance and evident irresolution 
of his daughter puzzled Mr. Wangrave — for he had no doubt 
that she loved Palgray, and his education of her head and heart 
gave him no clue to any principle of coquettishness, or willing- 
ness to give pain, for the pleasure of an exercise of power. Her 
mother, and all the members of the party, were aware of the 
mystery that hung over the suit of the young guardsman, but 
they were all alike discreet, while distressed, and confined their 
interference to the removal of obstacles in the way of the lovers' 
being together, and the avoidance of any topics gay enough to 
change the key of her spirits from the natural softness of the 
evening. 

Vespers were over, and the sad- colored figures of the monks 
were gliding indolently here and there, and Stephania, with Pal- 
gray beside her, stood a little apart from the group at the door 
of the secular refectory, looking off at the fading purple of the 



A PLAIN MAN S LOVE. 375 



sunset. I could not join her witliout crossing rudely the obvious 
wishes of every person present ; yet, for the last two days, I had 
scarce found the opportunity to exchange a word with her, and 
my emotion, now, was scarce controllable. The happier lover 
beside her, with his features heightened in expression (as I 
thought they never could be) by his embarrassment in wooing, 
was evidently and irresistibly the object of her momentary admi- 
ration. He offered her his arm, and made a movement toward 
the path off into the forest. There was an imploring deference 
infinitely becoming in his manner, and see it she must, with pride 
and pleasure. She hesitated — gave a look to where I stood, 
which explained to me, better than a world of language, that she 
had wished, at least, to speak to me on this last evening — and, 
before the dimness over my eyes had passed away, they were 
gone. Oh ! pitying Heaven ! give me never again, while wrapt 
in mortal weakness, so harsh a pang to suflfer. 

CHAPTER V. 

The convent-bell struck midnight, and there was a footfall in 
the cloister. I was startled, by it, out of an entire forgetfulness 
of all around me, for I was lying on my bed in the monastery 
cell, with my hands clasped over my eyes, as I had thrown my- 
self down on coming in; and, with a strange contrariety, my 
mind, broken rudely from its hope, had flown to my far-away 
home, oblivious of the benumbed links that lay between. A 
knock at my door completed the return to my despair, for, with a 
look at the walls of my little chamber, in the bright beam of 
moonlight that streamed in at the narrow window, I was, by recog- 



376 LEISURE STORY. 



nition, again at Vallambrosa, and Stephania, with an accepted 
lover's voice in her ear, was again near me, her moistened eyes 
steeped, with Palgray's, in the same beam of the all- visiting and 
unbetraying moon. 

Father Ludovic entered. The gentle tone of his henedicite, told 
me that he had come on an errand of sympathy. There was 
little need of preliminary between two who read the inner coun- 
tenance as habitually as did both of us ; and, as briefly as the knowl- 
edge and present feelings of each could be re-expressed in words, 
we confirmed the spirit-mingling that had brought him there, and 
were presently as one. He had read truly the drama of love, 
enacting in the party of visitors to his convent ; but his judgment 
of the possible termination of it was different from mine. 

^ 4& 4L, 4^ .At, Mf Mm 

•A" W •TV" "TV* TT W T^ 

Palgray's dormitory was at the extremity of the cloister, and 
we presently heard him pass. 

'* She is alone, now," said Father Ludovic ; "I will send you 
to her." 

My mind had strained to Stephania's presence with the first 
footsteps that told me of their separation ; and, it needed but a 
wave of his hand to unlink the spirit-wings from my weary frame. 
I was present with her. 

I struggled for a moment, but in vain, to see her face. Its 
expression was as visible as my hand in the sun, but no feature. 
The mind I had read was close to me, in a presence of conscious- 
ness ; and, in points, here and there, brighter, bolder, and further- 
reaching than I had altogether beheved. She was unutterably 
pure — a spirit without a spot — and I remained near her, with a 
feeling as if my forehead were pressed down to the palms of my 



A PLAIN MAN S LOVE. S71 



hands^ in homage mixed with sorrow — for I should have more 
recognized this in my waking study of her nature. 

A moment more — a trembhng effort, as if to read what were 
written to record my companionship for eternity — and a vague 
image of myself came out in shadow — clearer now, and still clearer, 
enlarging to the fullness of her mind. She thought wholly and 
only of that image I then saw ; yet with a faint coloring playing 
to and from it, as influences came in from the outer world. Her 
eyes were turned in upon it in lost contemplation. But suddenly 
a new thought broke upon me. I saw my image, but it was not 
I, as I looked to myself. The type of my countenance was 
there ; but, oh ! transformed to an ideal, such as I now, for the 
first time, saw possible— ennobled in every defective line — puri- 
fied of its taint from worldliness — inspired with high aspirations 
— cleared of what it had become cankered with, in its transmis- 
sion through countless generations since first sent into the world, 
and restored to a likeness of the angel of whose illuminated linea- 
ments it was first a copy. So thought Stephania of me. Thus 
did she believe I truly was. Oh ! blessed, and yet humiliating, 
trust of woman ! Oh ! comparison of true and ideal, at which 
spirits must look, out of heaven, and of which they must long, 
with aching pity, to make us thus rebukingly aware ! 

Ik 'k ^ '^ 'k ^ ^ 

I felt myself withdrawing from Stephania's presence. There 
were tears between us, which I could not see. I strove to remain, 
but a stronger power than my will was at work within me. I felt 
my heart swell with a gasp, as if death were bearing out of it the 
principle of life ; and my head dropped on the pillow of my bed. 

" Good night, my son," said the low voice of Father Ludovic ; 



378 LEISURE STORY. 



" I have willed that you should remember what you have seen. 
Be worthy of her love, for there are few like her." 

He closed the door, and, as the glide of his sandals died away in 
the echoing cloisters, I leaned forth to spread my expanding heart 
in the upward and boundless light of the moon — for I seemed to 
wish never again to lose, in the wasteful forgetfulness of sleep, 
the consciousness that I was loved by Stephania. 

^k % % % He % tk 

I was journeying the next day, alone, toward Venice. I had 
left written adieux for the party at Yallambrosa, pleading to my 
friends an unwillingness to bear the pain of a formal separation. 
Betwixt midnight and morning, however, I had written a parting 
letter for Stephania, which I had committed to the kind envoying 
of Father Ludovic, and thus it ran : — 

" When you read this, Stephania, I shall be alone with the 
thought of you, travelling a reluctant road, but still with a bur- 
then in my heart which will bring me to you again, and which 
even now envelopes my pang of separation in a veil of happi- 
ness. I have been blessed by Heaven's mercy with the power 
to know that you love me. Were you not what you are, I could 
not venture to startle you thus with a truth, which, perhaps, you 
have hardly confessed in waking reality to yourself; but you are 
one of those who are coy of no truth that could be found to have 
lain without alarm in your own bosom ; and, with those beloved 
hands pressed together with the earnestness of the clasp of 
prayer, you will say, ' yes, I love him V 

" I leave you now, not to put our love to trial, and still less in 
the ordinary meaning of the phrase, to prepare to wed you. The 
first is little needed, angels in heaven well know. The second is a 



A PLAIN MAN S LOVE. 379 



thought which will be in time, when I have done the work on which 
I am newly bent by the inspiration of love — the making myself what 
you think me to he. Oh, Stephania ! to feel encouraged, as God 
has given me strength to feel, that I may yet be this — that I may 
yet bring you a soul brought up to the standard you have raised, 
and achieve it by effort in self-denial, and by the works of honor 
and goodness that are as possible to a man in obscurity and pov- 
erty as to his brother in wealth and distinction — this is to me new 
life, boundless enlargement of sphere, food for a love of which, 
alas ! I was not before worthy. 

" I have told you unreservedly what my station in life is— 
what my hopes are, and what career I had marked out for strug- 
gle. I shall go on with the career, though the prizes I then 
mentally saw have, since, faded in value almost as much as my 
purpose is strengthened. Fame and wealth, my pure Stephania, 
are to you, as they now can only be to me, larger trusts of service 
and duty ; and, if I hope they will come while other aims are 
sought, it is because they will confer happiness on parents and 
friends, who mistakenly suppose them necessary to the winner of 
your heart. I hope to bring them to you. I know that I should 
come as welcome without them. 

" While I write — while my courage and hope throb loud in 
the pulses ol my bosom — I can think, even happily, of separa- 
tion. To leave you, the better to return, is bearable — even plea- 
surable — to the heart's noonday mood. But I have been steeped, 
for a summer now, in a presence of visible and breathing loveli- 
ness, (that you cannot forbid me to speak of, since language is too 
poor to out-color truth,) and there will come moments of depres- 
sion — twilights of deepening and undivided loneliness— hours of 



380 LEISURE STORY. 



illness, perhaps — and times of discouragement and adverse cloud- 
ings over of Providence — when I shall need to be remembered 
with sympathy, and to know that I am so remembered. I do 
not ask you to write to me. It would entail difficulties upon you, 
and put, between us, an interchange of uncertainties and possible 
misunderstandings. But I can communicate with you by a surer 
medium, if you will grant a request. The habits of your family- 
are such that you can, for the first hour after midnight, be always 
alone. Waking or sleeping, there will then be a thought of me 
occupying your heart, and — call it a fancy if you will — I can 
come and read it, on the viewless wings of tjie soul. 

*'I commend your inexpressible earthly beauty, dear Stepha- 
nia, and your still brighter loveliness of soul, to God's angel, who 
has never left you. Farewell! You will see me when I am 
worthy of you — if it be necessary that it should be first in heaven, 
made so by forgiveness there. 

Gell of St EusehiuSj Vall^mhrosa — day-hreahing. 



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